Jules Verne in Eighty Days" (1873). Verne is generally considered a major literary author in France and most of Europe, where he has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism. His reputation is markedly different in Anglophone regions, where he has often been labeled a writer of genre fiction or children's books, largely because of the highly abridged and altered translations in which his novels are often reprinted. Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking between Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare. He has sometimes been called the "Father of Science Fiction", a
Agatha Christie as the End", set in ancient Egypt, the culprit is killed by one of the few surviving characters before he can claim another victim. In some stories, the question remains unresolved of whether formal justice will ever be delivered, such as "Five Little Pigs" and "Endless Night". According to P. D. James, Christie often, but not always, made the unlikeliest character the guilty party. Savvy readers could sometimes identify the culprit by simply identifying the least likely suspect. On an edition of "Desert Island Discs" in 2007, Brian Aldiss claimed that Christie had told him that she wrote her books