Matilda - Roald Dahl's best-loved story - is an unbelievable 25 years old yet it's as fresh, funny and poignant as when it was first published in 1988. The story of a child genius, it has been adapted into film and, most recently, a hugely successful, award-winning musical with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin.
Tous les parents seraient fiers d'avoir une petite fille comme Matilda : mignonne, gentille et surtout dotée de facultés intellectuelles ahurissantes. Imaginez qu'à cinq ans elle a déjà lu tout Dickens, tout Hemingway et attaque Steinbeck ! Hélas pour Matilda, non seulement elle a pour géniteurs les pires crétins méchants que la terre ait portés, mais en plus Mlle Legourdin, la directrice de son école, est un monstre sadique qui hait les enfants. Heureusement pour elle, il y a Mlle Candy, l'institutrice, si douce, si gentille, si jolie...
Roald Dahl was born in Wales of Norwegian parents – the child of a second marriage. His father and elder sister died when Roald was just three. His mother was left to raise two stepchildren and her own four children. Roald was her only son.
He had an unhappy time at school - at Llandaff Cathedral School, at St Peter’s prep school in Weston-super-Mare and then at Repton in Derbyshire.
Dahl’s unhappy time at school was to influence his writing greatly. He once said that what distinguished him from most other children’s writers was “this business of remembering what it was like to be young”. Roald’s childhood and schooldays are the subject of his autobiography Boy.
Since Roald Dahl’s death, his books have more than maintained their popularity. Total sales of the UK editions are around 37 million, with more than 1 million copies sold every year! Sales have grown particularly strongly in America where Dahl books are now achieving the bestselling status that curiously proved elusive during the author’s lifetime.
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