Everyone who has entered ''the brilliantly coloured, sometimes
grotesque and sometimes magical world Dahl has conjured up in Boy'',
as Claire Tomalin described it in the Sunday Times, will be longing
to learn what happens to the supreme storyteller next in Going Solo
- and they will not be disappointed. It is a tale ofdeadly snakes
on the ground and daring deeds in the air, of African safaris and
encounters with the Hun, told with all the irresistible appeal
which has made Roald Dahl one of the world''s best-loved writers
both for adults and for children. In the autumn of 1938 Dahl sets
off to work in Africa aboard a paint-peeling tub full of the
dottiest fellow passengers imaginable. He falls in love with
Tanganyika: a wonderful, beautiful, exciting country, plentifully
covered with exotic wild animals - some of them best kept at a
considerable distance. The green and black mambas, Dahl learns,
make tricky opponents. Trickier still are the human predators, the
Huns, who are trying to take over the world. Britain declares war
on Germany and after temporary duty as an army officer, Dahl signs
up with the RAF. It is impossible to imagine a more exciting or
vivid account of what it was like to learn to fly a fighter plane
and take it up to dice with the enemy. A disastrous detour delays
him for six months, but then, with all six foot six inches
scrunched into the cockpit like a pretzel, young Dahl eventually
takes his place in the heavily depleted 80 Squadron, consisting of
a mere fifteen fighter pilots and their Hurricanes who have been
ordered to provide cover for the entire British Expeditionary Force
in Greece. In Dahl''s case this insanely doomed venture is
undertaken with minimal flying experience and no combat training
whatsoever. How close we came to never meeting Charlie and his
Chocolate Factory, Danny, the BFG, and Uncle Oswald and others will
soon be apparent. If you want to discover how a snake-man avoids a
poisonous bite, what to do if you find yourself in the mouth of a
lion and where Rudolph Valentino comes into it all, just plunge
into the adventurous pages of Going Solo. As Hazel Rochman in the
New York Times Book Review declared of Roald Dahl''s Boy: ''the
autobiographical stories are as frightening and funny as his
fiction''. What could be higher praise than that?
關於作者:
Roald Dahl''s short stories for adults are Over to You, Someone
Like You, Kiss Kiss and Switch Bitch, and he was twice presented
with the Edgar Allan Poe Award. His most recent books for children
are The Witches, The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me and Boy.