Multiculturalism and criminal mystery in agatha christie's murder on the orient express and peyami safa's arsene lupin in Istanbul

Abstract

Agatha Christie's 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express focuses on Hercule Poirot, the internationally renowned detective of Belgian origin, who has to leave Istanbul immediately after arriving. The novel is not only a murder story that uses the tropes of detective fiction, but also a novel revolving around the conflicts stemming from orientalist discourse and that of multiculturalism. Peyami Safa's 1934 novel Arsene Lupin in Istanbul, written under the nom de plume Server Bedi, is a novel of murder and theft focusing on the stories of a Turkish thief called Cingoz Recai, and a mysterious Belgian thief called Arsene Lupin, in Istanbul. The murders and thefts that occur in the novel are depicted in the narrative style of detective fiction, which was quite new to Turkish literature at the time of its publication, while the multicultural Istanbul lies in the background. This article reads Murder on the Orient Express and Arsene Lupin in Istanbul comparatively in terms of multiculturalism and orientalism, questioning, in the process, whether or not the multicultural background common to both novels may be considered as the very source of mystery behind the stories themselves.