BY SHARON SIBINDI AWARD-WINNING Bulawayo author Bryony Rheam (pictured) is preparing to give a speech on Agatha Christie’s 1922 trip to Southern Rhodesia, which is part of the Agatha Christie Festival 2022.
Rheam, a winner of the international Write Your Own Christie competition, is an enthusiast for the writing of Agatha Christie. The event will be held on September 15.
“In September of this year, I will be giving a talk on Agatha Christie’s 1922 trip to Southern Rhodesia,” Rheam told Standard Style.
“This talk will be presented online as part of the 2022 Agatha Christie Festival.
“Earlier this year, I was contacted by a South African writer, Michael Seers, who, together with his co-author, Stanley Trollip, had been invited to give a talk on Agatha Christie’s trip to South Africa (as part of the same trip).
“As he knew, I had written on Agatha Christie’s trip to Rhodesia, Seers asked me if I would like to join them in the talk.”
She said not many people know that Agatha Christie came to Rhodesia and many people just lump Rhodesia/Zimbabwe with South Africa.
“I am really excited to be shedding light on this part of her journey and making people aware of the fact that Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and South Africa are two different countries,” Rheam said.
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“My interest in Agatha Christie began when I was a child.
“My grandmother loved reading her books and I would go to the library for her to change her books so I knew all the covers and the titles.
“We used to watch all the series and films as a family and so they were very much a part of my life growing up.
“I was excited to discover that one of her lesser-known books,
“The Man in the Brown Suit, was partly set in Southern Rhodesia, mostly in Bulawayo and Victoria Falls.”
Rheam added: “I then set out to investigate her journey and see if I could find any evidence that she had been here. I wrote about this in my blog.”
All Come to Dust is Rheam’s second book written in the style of a Christie detective story.
The novel is set in modern day Zimbabwe, but it also looks back to the time just before independence.
