Roald Dahl

One of the world's most beloved children's authors, Roald Dahl is best known for his darkly imaginative kids' tales, but he also applied his smart, sinister, and distinctly British aesthetic to many stories for adults. The son of Norwegian parents, Dahl led a truly extraordinary life--a globetrotter by nature, he became a pilot in Britain's Royal Air Force when World War II began. A bona fide flying ace by the war's end, Dahl incorporated his international aerial experiences into a number of his earliest writings, but he eventually found his style in the dryly comedic and macabre stories that he crafted in the 1950s. Dahl became even more renowned when he branched out into children's literature with James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, tempering his biting aesthetic only slightly in the process. Briefly venturing into screenwriting with the James Bond film You Only Live Twice and the kiddie flick Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (both originated by his fellow author/war hero Ian Fleming), Dahl continued to pen literature for both children and adults until his death in 1990. Dahl's strange tales, which feature parents abruptly killed by a rhino and bratty kids dispatched in deliciously creative ways, are still widely read around the world, and Hollywood occasionally pays its respects with film adaptations of his exceptional work.