Por partes. Para empezar es un libro que no tenía intención de leer en este momento pero que finalmente ha caído en mis manos antes de lo previsto. Siempre pensé que me estrenaría con Matilda.

La historia se ambienta en la Segunda Guerra Mundial (1939-1945), pero en este caso lo hace desde el punto de vista de lo vivido en el Norte de África, en Oriente Medio y en Grecia. Nos encontramos ante un chico británico que comienza su aventura en Tanzania, y que siendo militar es destinado al Norte de África, donde le encomendarán participar en la fuerza área en la guerra que mantienen contra los alemanes. Actuará en Egipto, Libia y Grecia, y posteriormente en Palestina.

Debo admitir que para el tipo de novela de que se trata, no he terminado de conectar completamente con ella. La he leído en inglés y quizá haya podido ser por eso. El único personaje con el que terminas conectando más o menos es con el protagonista y con el chico tanzano que le asiste al principio de la historia. Los demás personajes son absolutamente secundarios o complementarios. Quizá sea por lo trillado que está el tema de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, pero la historia tampoco ha terminado de engancharme.

En definitiva, considero que estamos ante un libro que puede estar bien para pasar el rato, pero que tampoco te provoca emociones importantes. A mí me lo recomendaron como lectura apta para estudiantes de inglés de nivel C1, si bien considero que otras personas con un buen conocimiento del idioma también podrían entenderlo.

No obstante, ha sido una buena forma de conocer al autor y de introducirse en sus obras, con las que seguramente continuaré en un futuro.

NOTA: 6.5/10

First I read 'Boy' and then I read 'Going Solo'. This book is perfect. Roald Dahl tells the grown-up part of his life in such a way that made me crave more for his adventures in the Royal Air Force. It's like sitting in a cafe, listening to your date who's telling you amusing stories of his life. He's a hundred years older than you are, yet you still find him attractive!

A wonderful, harrowing and yet somehow light-hearted account of Dahl's time during the Second World War as a RAF pilot. Most fascinating, which one finds with the war poets, is, though it is obviously horrid and despicable, they all seem to bloody love war. Not nice when you nearly die, but jolly good fun otherwise. Camaraderie has a lot to do with it, but I think it's also just what you need to do when faced with such senseless, mindless stupidity.



Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Pinterest | Shop | Etsy

Roald Dahl’s funny and vivid second autobiography covers the 1930s and 40s.

It deals with his time in:

Africa
Dodging deadly black mamba snakes.

Greece
Fighting against the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Athens with only seven rickety planes.

Palestine
As a witness to the prelude of the creation of the Zionist entity. This section is extremely creepy and deserves to be quoted:

‘Is this your land?’ I asked him.
‘Not yet,’ he said.
‘You mean you’re hoping to buy it?’
He looked at me in silence for a while. Then he said, ‘The land is at present owned by a Palestinian farmer but he has given us permission to live here. He has also allowed us some fields so that we can grow our own food.’
‘So where do you go from here?’ I asked him. ‘You and all your orphans?’
‘We don’t go anywhere,’ he said, smiling through his black beard. ‘We stay here.’
‘Then you will all become Palestinians.’
‘No,’ the man said, ‘I do not think we will become Palestinians.’
‘Then which country did you have in mind?’
‘If you want something badly enough,’ he said, ‘and if you need something badly enough, you can always get it…’

I would read many more autobiographies if they were written in this fashion.

Dahl says it best:

A life is made up of a great number of small incidents, and a small number of great ones. An autobiography must, therefore, unless it is to become tedious, be extremely selective, discarding all the inconsequential incidents in one’s life, and concentrating upon those that have remained vivid in the memory.

Part two of his autobiography
Loved hearing all about his time at a pilot

A very different type of Dahl read but a fascinating one, nonetheless. What each of us lives through in life is anyone's guess, but what some people survive, is a whole other story. Roald Dahl was a fascinating guy and Going Solo is a fascinating look into an author best known for writing kid's tales about chocolate factories, witches, friendly giants, and giant peaches.

I had NO idea of several things in regards to him going into this book. Firstly, that this is the second part of his autobiography the first one being Boy, but even when I realized this, I thought it'd be a great exercise to read them out of order. Once I read Boy, I'll see how smart of a decision that was. Secondly, I had NO idea he was that tall. Measuring 6'6", it's just not a typical height for anyone, let alone a children's author. (Stephen King might be 6'4", but that kind of makes sense with what he writes.) Then you do some digging and find out Douglas Adams was 6'5" and realize that perception is an odd thing. Oh, and thirdly, he was an air pilot for the Royal Air Force, had several confirmed and unconfirmed kills, knew a villager in South Africa who beheaded someone else, saw a lion in the flesh, had close encounters with snakes and scorpions, survived and air crash, needed reconstructive surgery, and pretty much had no business living to the age of 74 with all the things he endured.

He was also an amazingly gifted writer and in this book shows he could weave a tale even about his own life in a way that is equal parts fantastical as it is relatable. So if you want to see another side or several other sides of Dahl, this is definitely a worthy read by all means and has a happy ending, which is something a lot of families during any war unfortunately are not as lucky to enjoy.

'Going Solo' is the second instalment of Dahl's autobiography. Whilst interesting, informative and entertaining this may be - it isn't anything like as compelling as the first book covering Dahl's earlier years - 'Boy'. Still definitely worth reading - for all fans of Dahl and anyone with an interest in his pre-literary life.

Going Solo (Roald Dahl's Autobiography #2), Roald Dahl

Going Solo is a book by Roald Dahl, first published by Jonathan Cape in London in 1986.

It is a continuation of his autobiography describing his childhood, Boy and detailed his travel to Africa and exploits as a World War II pilot.

As a young man working in East Africa for the Shell Company, Roald Dahl recounts his adventures living in the jungle and later flying a fighter plane in World War II.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز ششم ماه فوریه سال2001میلادی

عنوان: سفر تک نفره؛ نویسنده: رولد دال؛ مترجم: شهلا طهماسبی؛ تهران، نشر مرکز، سال1379؛ در200ص، مصور، نقشه، شابک9643054780؛ چاپ دوم سال1380؛ چاپ سوم سال1382؛ چاپ ششم سال1386؛ چاپ هفتم سال1388؛ شابک 9789643054786؛ موضوع: سرگذشتنامه نویسندگان بریتانیا - جنگ جهانی دوم - سده 20م

نقل از مقدمه: (بخش نخست کتاب، از زمانی آغاز می‌شود، که به «افریقای شرقی» سفر کردم؛ قسمت دوم، مربوط به زمانی است که در جنگ جهانی دوم وارد نیروی هوایی شدم)؛ پایان نقل

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 07/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 29/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

This book had some really exciting parts in it where the suspense was high, over wether Dahl was going to make it out of the dogfight alive. The rest of the book had a lot of repetition. Over and over again he just had dogfights and then landed and did the same thing. Here and there, there was an exciting part like i said. My favorite part of the book was probably when he crashed and had to be brought back to life.
The whole first half of the book was mainly my favorite part. Before he started to fly his plane he had to make an adventure all the way across an ocean in a boat with a lot of odd people. These people were called empire builders. They were basically the people that spread around the british culture to everywhere and everything about britain. These people were very funny odd, i liked them the most because they are not found anymore in todays time.

4.5 stars. A very interesting, eventful short memoir about five years in the author’s life, (1937 to 1942), covering notable incidents and characters he met. The story begins with his voyage to Africa and the various strange people he meets on the boat trip. He works for the Shell Oil company in Dar es Salaam, then joins the Royal Air Force, flying the Tiger Moth, Gloster Gladiator, and Hawker Hurricane. The author’s vivid descriptions of his fighter pilot exploits are particularly compelling.

Storytelling at its best. Highly recommended.

This book was first published in 1986.

I have a very personal relationship with Going Solo (one of my favorite books by one of my all-time favorite authors), so this review is going to be a bit personal and perhaps somewhat irrelevant.

My Going Solo
As a child, I'd devoured all of Dahl's books including this one, but its depth and underlying horror hadn't really registered with me as a nine-year-old.
Then, a decade later when I was nineteen, I was about to go on my very first 'grand' solo adventure: a backpacking trip to South Africa to stay and work in a wildlife conservation reserve (I was an ecstatic first-year Zoology student with big dreams about saving all the Cheetahs and Rhinos). Like many other travelers before an upcoming trip into the unknown, I got cold feet the night of departure, I almost wanted to cancel the whole thing and I was in desperate need of a story to distract me from my fear and encourage me to go on. So, one minute before leaving for the airport I snatched Going Solo from the shelf to take with me. I didn't recall the details, but I knew it was about a somewhat similar adventure, a solo trip to Africa, anyway. It saved me from anxiety and kept me hooked, awed, and encouraged through the airport fiasco and two long-winded flights. I took it to the wildlife reserve and read Dahl's descriptions of giraffe and elephants as I looked at the same animals in the distance. I formed an intimate bond with the book on that trip. So, Going Solo became my companion on all my solo trips after that. Whenever I am somewhere far out of my comfort zone and starting to wish I could run back to the comfort of my own bed, I take out this book, read my favorite highlights and forget I was scared of anything at all. I have cherished this book as a personal companion and motivational text, but that's only a tiny part of what this book is about and why it's so valuable.

Summary of The Book
Going Solo picks up where Dahl's childhood biography, Boy left off. In 1938, the 22-year-old Dahl signs a three-year contract to work in East Africa for three years with Shell. At this point, he's a typical young Englishman of his era: the world is his to discover and conquer, and the British Empire is there to help him in his great adventures and discoveries (he does not bat an eyelid about colonialism, of course). In the first part of the book, Dahl tells the stories of his tripe to Dar-es-Salaam on board a ship (so many funny parts), his stay in Tanzania which is filled with encounters with Mamba snakes, lions (and a "casually funny" story of a lion abducting a woman), giraffes, elephants, "dotty" colonialist Englishmen, and the local people, most notably his local valet Mdisho. This part of the book is more light-hearted than the rest and is filled with Dahl's typical deft sense of humor, his never-ending curiosity, wonder, and attentive observations:

n  “I often amazed myself by the way I behaved when I was certain that there were no other human beings within fifty miles. All my inhibitions would disappear and I would shout, ‘Hello, giraffes! Hello! Hello! Hello! How are you today?’ And the giraffes would incline their heads very slightly and stare down at me with languorous demure expressions, but they never ran away. I found it exhilarating to be able to walk freely among such huge graceful wild creatures and talk to them as I wished.”n

Then, in 1939 the war breaks out and the events start to get more and more harrowing. On the days he receives the official news of the start of the war, the 23-year-old Dahl is stationed on the road to Mozambique and is ordered to stop German civilians to get out of the country. His orders are to open fire on them if they resist. (it doesn't come to that, fortunately, but one man is killed).

n  “I was twenty-three and I had not yet been trained to kill anyone. I wasn’t absolutely sure that I could bring myself to give the order to open fire on a bunch of German civilians in cold blood should the necessity arise. I was feeling altogether very uncomfortable in my skin. [...]
What was I going to do, I asked myself, if they refused to go back and tried to barge their way through? I knew there and then that I could never quite bring myself to give the order for the machine-gun to mow them all down. It would be an appalling massacre. I stood there and said nothing.”
n

After that, he decides to join the airforce and goes on to flight training in Kenya and Iraq. Before he officially starts his service, he suffers a serious injury and nearly escapes death in a crash and is hospitalized for several months. He goes back and joins battle and flies fighter airplanes in Greece, Libya, and Palestine, miraculously surives many near-death situations and is finally forced to go back to England in 1941, because his head injuries leave him incapable to fly.
His experience shows how mindless the battle strategies were, how the priority of the commanders was symbolic action at any cost instead of the lives of soldiers, how, instead of evacuating on time and saving many pilots they were ordered to stay and "protect" a fleet that didn't even exist, and how many colossal losses of human life could have been prevented if pilots with minimal training weren't sent on perilous missions on their first flights, and generally if the commanders weren't so incapable and mindless.

Reflections
What I summed up in a few lines actually occupies most of the book and is some of the most terrifying, most haunting, most comic, and most light-hearted war memoirs I've ever read. Only Roald Dahl can write about war, airplanes crashing, oil tankers being bombed, people burned alive and lives lost, and STILL fit charm and humor in it.

“Dear Mama,
We’ve been doing some pretty intensive flying just lately – you may have heard about it a little on the wireless. [...] We’ve lost 4 pilots killed in the Squadron in the last 2 weeks, shot down by the French. Otherwise this country is great fun and definitely flowing with milk and honey …”
- Excerpt from one of the letters to his mother, many of which are included in the book.

His writing really demonstrates how ridiculous, how pointless, how grotesque war is at its core. Much of the world he lived in is absolutely alien and distant to me. I will never understand a world without long-distance telephone calls, I can't understand what it's like to be 23 and having to decide whether to shoot down 7o civilians of the "enemy", (at least I hope I won't have to do that in the next 16 months until I reach 24, but I think it's a safe bet that it won't come to that), I can't understand what it's like to be on air surrounded by 200 enemy aircraft ready to shoot you down, but I can relate to the humor, the deeply human feelings, the pain and joy and the spirit of adventure; and to the allure of "going solo". I am so grateful that Roald Dahl survived those atrocities and came to write most of my favorite childhood books and this memoir. But Dahl is only one person who managed to miraculously get out of one war alive, and he went on to become a terrific writer. I can't help but wonder, with a sting of longing, what about all the other potentially fantastic writers, artists, scientists, and generally life and joy that didn't survive all the wars humans have fought throughout history? What if they hadn't perished? What if all that potential wasn't lost for virtually nothing? I don't know. Surely, I would've wanted to read all of their works and memoirs as well.

Anyway, this book is one of my favorites of all time, partly because of the personal sentimental value that I've found in it over the years. It's been my trusty companion for whenever I'm Going Solo or getting lonely.
I recently listened to the audiobook narrated brilliantly by Dan Stevens (highly, highly recommended) on an early morning solitary run. While listening to the funniest parts, I was laughing out loud from behind my mask as I was jogging, which probably made a ridiculous sight and I'm sure a number of early morning commuters who saw me assumed I was insane. That's fine. I'm okay with looking silly when I'm immersed in Roald Dahl's world. It's a fantastic escape every single time. Everyone in his books is out of their minds anyway, and I love it.


Other works that remind me of this book: (Recommended if you enjoyed Going Solo)
- Hayao Miyazaki's anime films n  Porco Rosson and n  The Wind Risesn
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Pilote de guerre