#StoryDecon: ‘Man from the South’ by Roald Dahl

This article is filled with spoilers. If you haven’t read it already, you can find the 1948 story itself online here.

Plot summary

An Englishman spends time beside the swimming pool of a Jamaica hotel. He meets a man from South America, then they are joined by an American sailor and an English girl. The mysterious man proposes a bet: if the sailor can successfully light his lighter ten times in a row, he will win the man’s Cadillac; if he fails, the man will chop off the sailor’s little finger....