Origins Of The BFG

Sam Anderson reviews the new Roald Dahl biography, twenty years after his death, and recaps the series of unlucky mishaps that led Dahl to write such fantastic stories:

Dahl had an idyllic childhood until the age of 3, when his older sister suddenly died and was followed, weeks later, by her heartbroken father. This was the beginning of a toxic tsunami of bad luck that would toss Dahl around for the rest of his life. When he was a boy, his nose was cut off in a car accident. (A doctor sewed...