Cover of The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl published by Penguin – the edition I own (fair use)

(8) ROALD DAHL –

SWITCH B!TCH (1974)

“I don’t write horror stories, I write funny stories. I think they’re funny, anyway.”

Roald Dahl is best known for his children’s novels but started – and continued – as a writer of short stories for adults, interestingly originating from writing about and stories inspired by his military service as a literal ace pilot for the Royal Air Force in the Second World War.

While on the subject of his military service, Dahl lived a life out of an adventure novel. When his active service as a pilot ended when he was wounded in action, he was assigned as an assistant air attaché to the British Embassy in Washington DC – from which he managed to get involved with the British Security Co-Ordination, essentially a quasi-espionage organization. That saw him as something of a real-life James Bond, including being an “utterly shameless womanizer” – and may even have been the inspiration for the character, as he worked with Ian Fleming. Dahl wrote the script for the Bond film You Only Live Twice – and it shows in characteristic stylistic traits. However, Dahl’s own life, particularly that utterly shameless womanizing, was probably more the inspiration for his character Uncle Oswald.

If you think his children’s novels are dark, then oh boy – I have something to tell you about his stories for adults. You can tell them apart because his stories for adults are slightly darker with slightly more risqué subject matter.

“His style is exemplified by black comedy…His works for adults are almost universally cynical and pessimistic about human nature”.

There’s so much Road Dahl to choose from, even confined to his short stories for adults, but I’ll go with this short collection of four stories, originally published by Playb0y magazine, which was also my introduction to Dahl’s stories for adults – I had, after all, grown up reading his novels for children.

And I’ll go with the titular two short stories – well, almost titular for the story The Great Switcheroo (where two husbands plot to “switch” wives), but the other story is indeed titular from the other word in the title of the collection, with bonus points of having his recurring character Uncle Oswald as a protagonist in a plot involving an irresistible aphrodisiac.