"The Visitor" is a 1965 short story by British writer Roald Dahl, centred on the fictional Uncle Oswald and the lurid adventures he describes in his elaborate diaries. In this story, set in 1946, Oswald has amorous designs on his Syrian host's wife and teenage daughter, with unfortunate and unexpected consequences.
Plot
Oswald becomes stranded for a night near Cairo at the desert mansion of a wealthy businessman, Abdul Aziz, whose wife and adult daughter are both very beautiful. Oswald plots to seduce either the wife or daughter, and believes he has succeeded after a woman slips into his bedroom under cover of darkness and spends several passionate hours with him, although he cannot see her face and she refuses to converse with him. The next day, Oswald leaves the house none the wiser as to which of the two women he has slept with. The story ends with a twist as Mr Aziz reveals to Oswald that he has a second daughter who lives in seclusion in another part of the house – because she has incurable leprosy.
Publication history
"The Visitor" was first published in the May 1965 issue of Playboy. It was later included in the 1974 collection Switch Bitch.
Norton H Moses states that Dahl's story was likely expanded from an anecdote found in George "Dod" Orsborne's Master of the Girl Pat, published in 1949. Orsborne presented the anecdote as factual, involving a writer known to an editor who then told the story to Orsborne.
Additionally, this story was told at least once by Ian Fleming, from whom Dahl got the plot of "Lamb To The Slaughter". Dahl did not publish it until after Fleming's death.
However, David Ogilvy recalled that Dahl had told the basic story orally as early as 1941, during their association together through British intelligence activities during World War II, with Dahl half-seriously presenting the tale as a true incident that had happened to "a friend".
In other media
Television
In his later years, Alfred Hitchcock occasionally told this story as a black joke during his appearances on American talk shows, most notably during an appearance on The Tomorrow Show on 29 May 1973.
Akhbar's Daughter, a 1987 television pilot associated with Tales from the Darkside, bears many similarities to the Dahl and Orsborne stories.
Norm Macdonald tells a version of this story as a joke on his podcast Norm Macdonald Live, on season 2, episode 6.
See also
- "Bitch"
- "My Uncle Oswald"
- "Switch Bitch"
References
- ^ Moses, Norton H. (1999). "The Source of Roald Dahl's "The Visitor"". ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews. 12 (2): 34–36. doi:10.1080/08957699909598055. Archived from the original on 18 January 2015.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - Orsborne, George "Dod" (1949). Master of the Girl Pat. New York: Doubleday. pp. 58–60.
- Giggins, Oliver (16 February 2024). "The Mysterious Collaborations of Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming". Retrieved 13 May 2024.
- Treglown, Jeremy (2016) . Roald Dahl: A Biography. New York: Open Road Media. ISBN 9781504038591.
- "The Tomorrow Show (hosted by Tom Snyder)". YouTube. 8 January 2013. Archived from the original on 22 December 2021. Retrieved 19 January 2015.
- Skerry, Philip J. (2013). Dark Energy: Hitchcock's Absolute Camera and the Physics of Cinematic Spacetime. Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781623568696. Retrieved 19 January 2015.
- "Night Rose: Akhbar's Daughter (1987)". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 18 January 2015.
- Bell, Robert (11 November 2010). "Tales from the Darkside: The Final Season". Exclaim!. Archived from the original on 18 January 2015. Retrieved 9 December 2015.
- "Norm Macdonald with Guest Todd Glass (Pt 1)". Norm Macdonald Live. Season 2. Episode 6. June 2014. Jash.
External links
- The Visitor title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database