How Giant, a Provocative New Play, Tackles Roald Dahl's Antisemitism
The summer of 1983 was a tough time to be—and to be around—Roald Dahl, according to Mark Rosenblatt, whose play about the iconic author, Giant, has just opened at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London's West End. Dahl, then 66, was recently divorced; his fiancée was renovating his home, so he was living amid a construction mess while working on edits of The Witches; and the press was tearing him apart for a review he penned about a book on the 1982 Israel-Lebanon conflict. His essay went beyond criticism of Israeli actions and was widely denounced as antisemitic.
'Never before in the history of man has a race of people switched so rapidly from being much-pitied victims to barbarous murderers,' Dahl wrote.
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