The Kumbak II

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Kumbak II is the very first short story by the British writer Roald Dahl (1916–1990). He wrote it in 1926 when he was ten. The story remained unpublished, but the handwritten manuscript is still there. In retrospect, Roald Dahl described the writing of The Kumbak II as "his first serious attempt at a short story" in later years .

action

In The Kumbak II , a child discovers that his uncle Aristotle has invented a machine that can be used to listen to conversations from the past. The child uses the machine to prove that a certain Benjamin Bluebottle is guilty of murdering Miss Jemima Redbottom.

Main motif in another short story as well

In the short story Der Lautforscher (original title The Sound Machine ), which was first published in 1949, Dahl takes up the subject again: sounds that are otherwise inaudible to the human ear (for example the screams of pain from flowers when they are cut and from trees when chopped off) can be made audible by a machine; the inventor of this machine is a man similar to that in The Kumbak II .

Exhibition of the original manuscript

The short story, handwritten by Roald Dahl, has been in the Dahl family's possession for years since its creation. It was only in 2016 that the manuscript was made available to the public for about eight months by Penguin Books in the publishing building in London . The occasion was the 100th birthday of Roald Dahl.

See also

literature

  • Donald Sturrock: Storyteller. The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl, New York and London 2010
  • Roald Dahl: The Phonologist , in: ... and another kiss! More unusual stories, Reinbek 1967, pp. 120–130

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Sturrock, p. 628
  2. ↑ Sturrock, p. 291
  3. ↑ Sturrock, p. 291
  4. ↑ Information on The Sound Machine
  5. ↑ Sturrock, p. 291
  6. ↑ Publicly made invitation to view Dahl's original writing