Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life (First Edition)

Dahl's first new book in eight years - a slender collection of the elegantly ironic stories that he does better than anyone else alive - is cause for celebration, even though the stories aren't among his best or most recent - or even new to his dedicated readers. All of the seven stories here, as Dahl explains in his Preface, were written in the late 1940's and inspired by his friend and neighbor Claud, who appears in several of these stories as Claud Cubbage, an inveterate schemer, poacher, and gambler with a gift for inventive cheats that somehow backfire - running and backing a faster greyhound in place of his slower double; poaching pheasants by feeding them Seconal-filled raisins; standing up to his girl's father by describing his dream of a maggot factory.

Hardcover. English. Michael Joseph, London. 1989. ISBN: 0718132521. 162 pp. Book No: 500085