Entertaining, hilarious and a naughty read. Who would have thought this writer of children’s books could come with such highly imaginative sexual exploits.

So much rape! All the men are stupid. All the women are whores. Such a horrible fantasy translated to Dutch in the most cringe way ever.

Should have stuck to children's books

Παρωχημένο χιούμορ κάκιστης ποιότητας.

Beautiful Yasmin harvests the semen of the great men of Europe (and the USA).

An outrageous concept from Roald Dahl. Young boy entrepreneur Oswald Cornelius uses African blister beetle powder as a means to extract sperm from kings and generals and painters and writers and musicians to market to rich, vain women, bored with their husbands, who want to have outstanding progeny. Oswald does this in partnership with the irresistible Yasmin, a scientist and looker, and Arthur Worsley, who has developed a method of freezing the product.

The story takes off as we learn the mechanics of the operation and witness almost literally the initial harvests. This is where Dahl is at his best, when his imagination runs amok and he clothes his fanciful ideas with really plausible science, mechanics and biology. We know this from his children’s stories and short stories and indeed his autobiographies, but My Uncle Oswald becomes repetitious and rather distasteful. Yasmin is essentially allowing men to force themselves upon her. Dahl himself tacitly recognises this by saying it would be boring to describe the encounters as they progress. This is borne out by some of the better detailed encounters such as the one with Puccini, where Yasmin sings one of his arias in his garden late at night to entice the great man to make a contribution.

The setting is 1912, for a couple of good reasons: it enables Dahl to describe sex acts with well-known real historical figures (Monet, Arthur Conan Doyle, Albert Einstein) who are well and truly dead. Oswald and Yasmin also travel with some decidedly dodgy baggage and this is facilitated by the rudimentary customs procedures of the time.

I think Dahl is a better short story writer than a novelist – this concept does not sustain a novel length treatment (even at 205 pages). It might have been more sustainable is he had looked at the results of the donor sperm.

7/10
Okuması oldukça keyifli, cinsellikle ilgili hicivlerin yer aldığı eğlenceli bir kitap.
Özellikle M. Proust'la ilgili bölümde kahkahalar attım. Nokta atış önerisi için deniztema'ya şükranlar...

The Evening Standard said this book was "Rollicking, raunchy and outrageous". It was all that as well as enjoyable , light entertainment.
6.5/10

Quite entertaining and classic Roald Dahl use of language, but pretty misogynistic, racist and homophobic in a sort of 'light hearted written in the 70s set in the 20s' sort of way. Slightly worrying that he was capable of writing kids books alongside the filthy stuff contained here.. Worth a read at only 200 pages.

I would not recommend this book to anyone other than the painfully curious on what an adult fiction by Dahl would be like. And even that, I can likely spare you the drudge.

Boring, conveniently wrapped up at the end, flat and sexist characters. Yech.

The only thing Dahl in the entire book was his reference to ‘snozzberry,’ the rest was boring, pointless sleaze.

Do yourself a favour and pass on this.

Also not sure why reading this book made creepy men follow me? Also yech.

After discovering the aphrodisiac qualities of the Sudanese Blister Beetle, young Oswald embarks upon a scheme to collect the semen of the world's greatest minds, set up a sperm bank, and get filthy rich. Now, this could have turned out to be a load of wank if it wasn't so engagingly libelous in places. However, there are a few things that grate - the idea that a beautiful woman, or any woman for that matter, would enjoy being raped by a series of desiccated pensioners is a very dated male conceit, and there is an uncomfortable tightrope for modern sensibilities to walk throughout. It also reminded me in tone of the 'Carry On' movies - a genre I always despised.

A 203 page dirty joke. Amusing, but not in the same league as Kiss Kiss, or his children’s novels. Parts were repetitious and unnecessary. Not a bad book, but nothing I would go out of me way to read again.

Много харесах книгата, забавлявах се доста :)