This collection gathers seven of Roald Dahl's stories for older readers, mixing invented tales with pieces drawn from his own life. At its centre is the title story, in which Henry Sugar, a wealthy idler with nothing better to do, stumbles on the notebook of a man who taught himself to see without his eyes — and sets out to master the trick for the least admirable of reasons, only to be changed by what he learns.
Around it stand six more: a boy who can talk to animals and tries to save a giant sea turtle; a hitchhiker who turns out to be a "fingersmith" with a very particular skill; a schoolboy tormented by bullies in the chilling "The Swan"; and "The Mildenhall Treasure," Dahl's factual account of a ploughman who turned up a hoard of Roman silver in a Suffolk field and the farmer who tried to keep it quiet. Two autobiographical pieces close the book — one on how Dahl became a writer, one on the wartime crash that nearly killed him.
By turns funny, eerie, and quietly moving, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More shows Dahl's range beyond his famous children's novels, with his trademark taste for the strange and the unexpected.