Roald Dahl - novels - 1961 - p. 81

In this popular children’s novel, the eponymous youth enters an enormous incarnation of the eponymous fruit, where he embarks on adventures with a troupe of seven anthropomorphized bugs. Together, they seek to escape James’s cruel aunts, who treat him as an indentured servant, forcing him to do hard labor and affording him only minimal nourishment. The story is “revealed,” at the end, to have been written by James himself.

Key elements: absent father; Europe; frame narrative; juvenile literature