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Roald Dahl's new book is a wonderful collection of stories, most of which were written in the late 1940s, originally published in various magazines and collections in the forties and fifties, and are gathered here together for the first time. Set in one English village and sharing a cast of characters, these stories--each bearing the inimitable, antic, slightly wicked Dahl touch--have the vivid effect of a novel, giving us the larger picture of this small world in the years just after World War II. And leave it to Dahl to find the most unusual, the eeriest, the funniest, and the most shocking details lurking inside this (or any) pastoral.
There's the rat catcher who looks--and acts--alarmingly like his quarry...the grand backfiring of the greatest pheasant poaching (a "sporting type of stealing" ) ever almost pulled off...the strange disappearance--and gruesome reappearance--of Ole Jimmy, the elderly, sweet-tempered, tipsy playground attendant...the comings and goings at the illegal greyhound racetrack where the dogs are far tamer than the bookies...the surprising origin of the expression "bull's eye" (and a lesson in assuring the sex of your cow's next calf)...
Seven stories that delight us with their mixture of the charming and the charmingly perverse, and that remind us--as only a Roald Dahl story can--that the mystery of life isn't always as sweet as it seems.
--front flap
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Showing 8 featured editions. View all 8 editions?
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Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life
2009, Penguin Group UK
Electronic resource
in English
0141941618 9780141941615
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Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life
April 1991, Tandem Library
Unknown Binding
in English
1417703059 9781417703050
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Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life: The Country Stories of Roald Dahl
1990, Penguin Books
Paperback
in English
- 14th printing
0140118470 9780140118476
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Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life: stories
1990, Alfred A. Knopf
Hardcover
in English
- 1st American ed.
0394582659 9780394582658
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The sweet scents of rural life infuse this collection of Roald Dahl's country stories, but there is always something unexpected lurking in the undergrowth...
Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life brings together seven of Roald Dahl's short stories set in and around the Buckinghamshire countryside where Roald lived. The collection was first published in 1989, but all of the stories were originally written in the late 1940s. They are based on Roald's experiences with his friend Claud, a man who lived in the nearby town of Amersham. Claud was an experienced poacher and shared Roald's passion for "gambling in small amounts on horses and greyhounds."
From troublesome cows to rat-infested hayricks to maggot farming, Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life brings the tales of everyday country folk and their strange passions wonderfully to life. And many of the characters that feature in this collection went on to inspire and appear in other stories: there's Parson's Pleasure, which features an antiques dealer and bogus clergyman called Boggis, later the name of one of the farmers in Fantastic Mr Fox. And Danny's dad, the filling-shop owner with some ingenious methods for catching pheasants from Danny the Champion of the World, makes an early appearance inThe Champion of the World.
The seven stories in the collection are:
Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life
Parson's Pleasure
Ratcatcher
Rummins
Mr Hoddy
Mr Feasey
Champion of the World
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