Endless Night

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  • Novel
  • 1967

Gipsy’s Acre was a truly beautiful upland site with views out to sea – and in Michael Rogers it stirred a child-like fantasy. There, amongst the dark fir trees, he planned to build a house, find a girl and live happily ever after. Yet, as he left the village, a shadow of menace hung over the land. For this was the place where accidents happened. Perhaps Michael should have heeded the locals’ warnings: ‘There’s no luck for them as meddles with Gipsy’s Acre.’ Michael Rogers is a man who is about to learn the true meaning of the old saying ‘In my end is my beginning.’

I just woke up feeling happy this morning. You know those days when everything in the world seems right.

Michael Rogers, Endless Night

More about this story

The title Endless Night was taken from William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence and describes Christie’s favourite theme in the novel: a “twisted” character, who always chooses evil over good.

Christie finished Endless Night in six weeks, as opposed to the three-four months that most of her other novels took. Despite being in her seventies while writing it, she told an interviewer that being Michael, the twenty-something narrator, “wasn’t difficult. After all, you hear people like him talking all the time.”

The story was adapted for film in 1972, starring Hayley Mills and Britt Ekland. It was adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 2008 and a graphic novel version of the story was released later that year. Endless Night was also adapted for TV in 2013 with the added character of Miss Marple played by Julia McKenzie.

The book is dedicated to Christie's relative "Nora Prichard from whom I first heard the legend of Gipsy's Acre." Gipsy's Acre was a field on the Welsh moors.

Did you know?

  1. In response to a Japanese translator's top 10 Christie novels, Agatha Christie described Endless Night as 'my own favourite at present.'

  2. Endless Night is narrated by a young working-class male - and she wrote it when she was 76.

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