(This discovery may have had something to do with the role I played in вЂњCharlie and the Chocolate FactoryвЂќ: I was the narrator.)Дahl died, in Oxford, England, in 1990, at the age of seventy-four, and this September marks the centennial of his birth, in Cardiff, Wales. But he made me aware that the narrator, whether third person or first, is not a neutral figure but an active, even directive, force. Put another way, reading Dahl was my introduction to the importance of the teller, the idea that a successful story was less a matter of narrative than of voice-or not less, exactly, for DahlвЂ™s writing is nothing if not plotted. I first encountered the work of Roald Dahl in third grade, by playing a character in a classroom adaptation of вЂњCharlie and the Chocolate Factory.вЂќ Not long after that, I read вЂњJames and the Giant Peach.вЂќ I was not a child who particularly cared for childrenвЂ™s literature, but even as an eight- or nine-year-old I was captivated by the way DahlвЂ™s fantasias took on their own logic, their own momentum, and were driven as much by the flow of language as by the absurdities of plot.

Roald dahl short stories for adults