Part two of Roald Dahl’s autobiography. I loved it! This book takes places during the 1930s and 40s, while he worked as a Shell Oil employee in Eastern Africa, as well as a fighter pilot for the Royal Air Force during WWII. A quick, brilliant must-read for this whole love WWII memoirs!

Review Coming Up

I adored 'Boy' when I read it as a child, and was always disappointed that I could never find 'Going Solo' in a separate edition (even at a young age it didn't make financial sense to buy a copy of a book I already had in order to get the second version!).

It may have been a long wait, but it was worth it. Dahl's real life it seems was almost as eventful as his books, and in case I'd forgotten, this was a wonderful reminder of quite how brilliant he is at telling a story!

Definitely not a kids book but it was brilliantly written and I couldn’t put it down, even brought a tear to my eye at the end

It's no wonder that an author of fantastical work has had fantastical life experiences too. Reading about the 30s and early 40s, provided a barometer on how much things have progressed and changed since then. Following on boy, this book discusses mostly Roald Dahl's experiences with Shell company in Africa, and his expedition with the RAF in the second world war. This book is inevitably darker, but still remains an engaging and light read.
Fascinating it was, to read about the instances that have etched themselves into a person's memory. Very often these are the very situations that have made us into the people we are today, and thus tracing the path of how one forges their identity. My fav part however was seeing the intense love and adoration he has for his mother sprinkled throughout the narrative.

An outstanding WWII memoir. Any thought that this would be somehow dry relative to Dahl's more outlandish fiction proved to be unfounded.

Every chapter was gripping in its own way as he gave us a glimpse into his (often harrowing) years in Africa and the RAF.

Dahl's writing, whether fiction or nonfiction, is top notch. He shares the simplest stories using the simplest words and most lucid language, absorbing the reader into the plot, taking us along with him through his journeys, and he seems to have quite a few of those!

Picture this. Your country has just gone to war. You are joining the Air Force out of a sense of duty. You might not make it a year from now. Yet, you fly over Kenya in the airplane that you've just learned to operate and think to yourself -

“What a fortunate fellow I am, I kept telling myself. Nobody has ever had such a lovely time as this!”

The perspective he had about things, his nazariya was unique and that's reflected in the way he lived his life and the stories he told.

Dahul begins Going Solo with his brilliant observations and descriptions of those who had spent their lives in furthering the British Empire. He ends with a happy yet poignant account of his journey back home. Between those two ends, all I could think to myself is thank fucking God I know he survives the war.

A biography about the second half of Roald Dahls life that covers his time in the airforce as he flies against the Germans in WW2.

Very moving and human Roald really invites us in to his life. What he experiences is terrifying and thrilling at the same time and all the more engrossing because you know it is real. From his time in training, to an epic chapter that covers his first crash, survival and time in hospital.

To know that such a gentle man, a man who writes so well for children, went through such incredible ordeals and came out still able to connect with the children of the world is a marvel.

In 1938, Dahl embarks on a ship to his new job in Africa, experiencing his first, eye opening encounters with British civil servants. Once established in his job, having successfully mastered sufficient Swahili, Dahl travels extensively with vivid descriptions of elephants, giraffes, lions and snakes--big, bad, deadly snakes. Nonetheless, Dahl is having the time of his life, although everyone knows war is coming.

The balance of the book recounts Dahl's enlistment in the RAF, the pitiful training on antiquated equipment, and experiences with ill prepared leaders. One of the latter sends him off with the wrong coordinates, resulting in a crash landing in no-man's land and months in hospital.

Recovered, Dahl is sent to Greece, fighting a rearguard action as the Germans pour soldiers and planes into the country that their Italian allies failed to secure. Dahl clearly disagrees with the decision, which I found odd given his scathing comments on Vichy Frenchmen in Syria. As was apparent in Fortress Malta: An Island Under Siege 1940-43, the British high command was halfhearted in implementing Churchill's policy, as well as ensuring dissemination of the hard learned lessons of the Battle of Britain to fliers in other theaters of war.

The book ends with Dahl's return to England, repatriated due to recurring headaches from his head injuries back in Egypt.

Throughout, Dahl comes across as a genuinely nice man, from the nightly hour spent teaching his servant to read and write English and Swahili through his struggles with the necessity of killing the enemy in war.

My knowledge of Dahl had been limited to a few anecdotes about his unhappy, and shortlived, time as Assistant Air Attache in hard partying D.C., his more successful time with the British Security Coordination, and his marriage to Patricia Neal. I intend to backtrack, to read about his younger years in Boy: Tales of Childhood.

ok so war is bad (obvi). don't cancel me

3 1/2 stars. I never read this one when I was young because I was more interested in the candy and mice anecdotes of "Boy," but I found this book fascinating. I wasn't super into the descriptions of planes but I liked all the anecdotes. God, so how about that colonialism? I got a very "Empire of the Sun" vibe from all the descriptions of the fancy British houses in Sudan and Alexandria and Dar es Salaam, with the servants hovering in the background. Problematic, yet a product of its time. The chapter in which he runs into Jewish refugees in Palestine/Syria was SUPER interesting. The other main feeling I was left with after reading this is I definitely can't believe Roald Dahl survived World War II (13 out of the 16 men he initially trains with in Nairobi are killed). He could have died at SO many points of this book (particularly when he crashes after his very first mission), and yet by sheer randomness he didn't. It really drives home to you how surviving is just, like, random. And it makes me sad to think of the people who did die, in terms of what they could have gone on to do. The Battle of Athens sounded absolutely mental, especially in terms of the very stupid-sounding (at least to me) decisions made by the people in charge. Flying combat in general sounds like total hell and major respect to anyone who did it. This book reinforced to me that war is the worst and whoever is in charge of giving orders for soldiers to die ought to go out into the field for themselves first. What a great writer.

Great book. I still can't believe that Roald Dahl experienced so many thrilling adventures before he became an author. This book had crash landings to green mamba attacks. If I were him I would have never left his thrilling life. I really loved the middle of the book because that's when the book started to become interesting. 10/10 great book. I recommend it to anyone who likes a thrilling and adventurous book.