Table of Contents

Introduction by Jeremy Treglown
Select Bibliography
Chronology

An African Story
Only This
Katina
Beware of the Dog
They Shall Not Grow Old
Someone Like You
Death of an Old Old Man
Madame Rosette
A Piece of Cake
Yesterday Was Beautiful
Nunc Dimittis
Skin
Man from the South
The Soldier
The Sound Machine
Mr Botibol
Vengeance Is Mine Inc.
The Wish
Poison
Taste
Dip in the Pond
The Great Automatic Grammatizator
Claud’s Dog:
—The Ratcatcher
—Rummins
—Mr Hoddy
—Mr Feasey
My Lady Love, My Dove
Neck
Lamb to Slaughter
Gallopin Foxley
Edward the Conqueror
The Way Up to Heaven
William and Mary
Parson’s Pleasure
Georgy Porgy
Mrs Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat
Royal Jelly
The Champion of the World
Genesis and Catastrophe
Pig
The Landlady
The Visitor
The Last Act
The Great Switcheroo
The Butler
Bitch
Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life
The Hitchhiker
The Umbrella Man
The Bookseller
The Surgeon

Appendix: Dates of Composition and First Publication

About the Author

Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was born in Llandaff, South Wales, and went to Repton School in England. His parents were Norwegian, so holidays were spent in Norway. As he explains in Boy, he turned down the idea of university in favor of a job that would take him to 'a wonderful faraway place'. In 1933 he joined the Shell Company, which sent him to Mombasa in East Africa. When World War II began in 1939 he became a fighter pilot and in 1942 was made assistant air attaché in Washington, where he started to write short stories. His first major success as a writer for children was in 1964. Thereafter his children's books brought him increasing popularity, and when he died children mourned the world over, particularly in Britain where he had lived for many years.

Reviews

“With the inventive power of a Thomas Edison and the imagination of a Lewis Carroll . . . Roald Dahl is a wizard of comedy and the grotesque, an artist with a marvelously topsy-turvy sense of the ridiculous in life.”
—CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER

“Dahl has the mastery of plot and characters possessed by great writers of the past, along with a wildness and wryness of his own. One of his trademarks is writing beautifully about the ugly, even the horrible.”
—LOS ANGELES TIMES

“A collection of Roald Dahl stories is always occasion for applause.”
—CHICAGO DAILY NEWS

“An ingenious imagination, a fascination with odd and ordinary detail . . . are the first strengths of Dahl’s storytelling.”
—NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“[Dahl’s] stare is unblinking, and most of his tales are irritants, provocations. Fantastic as Grimm, neat as O. Henry, heartless as Saki, they stick in the mind long after subtler ones have faded: incredible (literally), unforgettable, and vengefully funny.”
—from the Introduction by Jeremy Treglown