"The Visitor" is a 1965 short story by British writer Roald Dahl, centred on the fictional Uncle Oswald and the lurid adventures he describes in his elaborate diaries. In this story, set in 1946, Oswald has amorous designs on his Syrian host's wife and teenage daughter, with unfortunate and unexpected consequences.
Oswald becomes stranded for a night near Cairo at the desert mansion of a wealthy businessman, Abdul Aziz, whose wife and adult daughter are both very beautiful. Oswald plots to seduce either the wife or daughter, and believes he has succeeded after a woman slips into his bedroom under cover of darkness and spends several passionate hours with him, although he cannot see her face and she refuses to converse with him. The next day, Oswald leaves the house none the wiser as to which of the two women he has slept with. The story ends with a twist as Mr Aziz reveals to Oswald that he has a second daughter who lives in seclusion in another part of the house – because she has incurable leprosy.
"The Visitor" was first published in the May 1965 issue of Playboy . [1] It was later included in the 1974 collection Switch Bitch .
Norton H Moses states that Dahl's story was likely expanded from an anecdote found in George "Dod" Orsborne's Master of the Girl Pat, published in 1949. Orsborne presented the anecdote as factual, involving a writer known to an editor who then told the story to Orsborne. [1] [2]
Additionally, this story was told at least once by Ian Fleming, from whom Dahl got the plot of "Lamb To The Slaughter". Dahl did not publish it until after Fleming's death. [3] [ self-published source? ]
However, David Ogilvy recalled that Dahl had told the basic story orally as early as 1941, during their association together through British intelligence activities during World War II, with Dahl half-seriously presenting the tale as a true incident that had happened to "a friend". [4]
In his later years, Alfred Hitchcock occasionally told this story as a black joke during his appearances on American talk shows, most notably during an appearance on The Tomorrow Show on 29 May 1973. [5] [6]
Akhbar's Daughter, a 1987 television pilot [7] associated with Tales from the Darkside , [8] bears many similarities to the Dahl and Orsborne stories.
Norm Macdonald tells a version of this story as a joke on his podcast Norm Macdonald Live , on season 2, episode 6. [9]
Roald Dahl was a British author of popular children's literature and short stories, a poet, screenwriter and a wartime fighter ace. His books have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. He has been called "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century".
Tales from the Darkside is an American anthology horror television series created by George A. Romero. A pilot episode was first broadcast on October 29, 1983. The series was picked up for syndication, and the first season premiered on September 30, 1984. The show would run for a total of four seasons.
Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984) is an autobiography written by British writer Roald Dahl. This book describes his life from early childhood until leaving school, focusing on living conditions in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s, the public school system at the time, and how his childhood experiences led him to writing children's books as a career. It concludes with his first job, working for Royal Dutch Shell. His life story continues in the book Going Solo.
Kiss Kiss is a collection of short stories by Roald Dahl, first published in 1960 by Alfred A. Knopf. Most of the constituent stories had been previously published elsewhere.
Roald Dahl short stories bibliography is a comprehensive annotated list of short stories written by Roald Dahl.
My Uncle Oswald is a 1979 novel in the sex comedy genre written by Roald Dahl.
Switch Bitch (1974) is a book of adult short stories by British writer Roald Dahl. Four stories, originally published in Playboy between 1965 and 1974, are collected. They are linked by themes of rape by deception: in each one, some major act of cunning, cruelty, or hedonism underpins the sexuality.
"The Way Up to Heaven" is a macabre short story by Roald Dahl. It was originally published in The New Yorker, as were some of the other short stories that would later be reprinted in the 1960 collection Kiss Kiss.
"Bitch" is a short story written by Roald Dahl, and it is the second appearance of Dahl's character Uncle Oswald.
"Lamb to the Slaughter" is a 1954 short story by Roald Dahl. It was initially rejected, along with four other stories, by The New Yorker, but was published in Harper's Magazine in September 1953. It was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (AHP) that starred Barbara Bel Geddes and Harold J. Stone. Originally broadcast on April 13, 1958, this was one of only 17 AHP episodes directed by Hitchcock. The episode was ranked #59 of the Top 100 Episodes by TV Guide in 2009. The story was adapted for Dahl's British TV series Tales of the Unexpected. Dahl included it in his short story compilation Someone Like You. The narrative element of the housewife killing her husband and letting the policemen eat the evidence was used by Pedro Almodóvar in his 1984 movie What Have I Done to Deserve This?, with a leg of mutton.
Tales of the Unexpected is a British television series that aired between 1979 and 1988. Each episode told a story, often with sinister and wryly comedic undertones, with an unexpected twist ending. Every episode of series one, twelve episodes of series two, two episodes of series three, two episodes of series four, and one episode of series nine were based on short stories by Roald Dahl collected in the books Tales of the Unexpected, Kiss Kiss, and Someone Like You.
Roald Dahl: Collected Stories is a hardcover edition of short-stories by Roald Dahl for adults. It was published in the US in October 2006 by Random House as part of the Everyman Library. It includes all Roald Dahl's stories in chronological order as established by Dahl's biographer, Jeremy Treglown, in consultation with the Dahl estate. A few of the short stories were not published chronologically in book form, but appeared later, collected in More Tales of the Unexpected (1980). The collection contains all of the short stories published in the following collections:
"Dip in the Pool" is a macabre short story by British writer Roald Dahl, originally published in the 19 January 1952 edition of The New Yorker. It later appeared in the collection Someone Like You (1953).
Gary Northfield is a British cartoonist, most famous for his Derek the Sheep comic strip published in DC Thomson's The Beano and BeanoMAX.
The Mildenhall Treasure is a non-fiction work written by British author Roald Dahl. It tells the story of the discovery in 1942 near Mildenhall in Suffolk of the Mildenhall Treasure, now held in the British Museum.
Vengeance is Mine, Inc is a short story by British author Roald Dahl. It was first published in the 1980 collection More Tales of the Unexpected.
Poison is a short story written by Roald Dahl that was originally published in June 1950 in Collier's.
"Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat" is a short story by Roald Dahl that first appeared in the 1959 issue of Nugget. The story is Dahl's variation on a popular anecdote dating back at least to 1939: a married woman receives a glamorous mink coat from a man with whom she had an affair. She hopes to sneak the coat into her home without arousing her husband's suspicions, but soon discovers her husband has his own plans.
Roald Dahl (1916–1990) was a British author and scriptwriter, and "the most popular writer of children's books since Enid Blyton", according to Philip Howard, the literary editor of The Times. He was raised by his Norwegian mother, who took him on annual trips to Norway, where she told him the stories of trolls and witches present in the dark Scandinavian fables. Dahl was influenced by the stories and returned to many of the themes in his children's books. His mother also nurtured a passion in the young Dahl for reading and literature.
"Measles: A Dangerous Illness" is an open letter written by the children's writer Roald Dahl in 1986 in response to ongoing cases of measles in the United Kingdom at that time despite the introduction of an effective measles vaccine in 1968.
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