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Roald Dahl’s monstrous views have a seat at the table today

JL;DR SUMMARY The play "Giant," now on Broadway, explores an imagined confrontation between Roald Dahl and his publishers following Dahl's antisemitic comments in a 1983 review of the book "God Cried," which critiqued the 1982 Lebanon War. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

BroadwayRoald DahlLebanon WarPublishingDiscourseGiantJohn LithgowMark Rosenblatt

Places mentioned

Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom
"Roald Dahls house is falling down. Its 1983, and the childrens authors Buckinghamshire estate is undergoing a gut renovation."
London, United Kingdom
"The play Giant, now on Broadway after an Olivier Award-winning run on the West End, imagines an afternoon in which Dahls publishers try to cajole him into an apology hes determined not to make."
New York, United States
"Earlier this month, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdanis wife, Rama Duwaji, was revealed to have contributed freelance illustrations to a book of stories by young people in Gaza compiled by the Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa."
Beirut, Lebanon
"Even the context of war in Lebanon that Dahl decried has currency, as Israel now trades fire with the remnants of Hezbollah and videos of demolished apartment blocks in Beirut proliferate online."
New York, United States
"Dahl waxes Goebellsian, calling her Stein, and has her take dictation to a Holocaust survivor bookseller in the Hudson Valley who refuses to stock his work: The kinder of his shtetl in upstateNooYoikwill have to make do no, survive on a strictly kosher diet of Laura Ingalls Wilder."
Israel
"The article, which ran in the magazine Literary Review, crossed a then-clear line from legitimate critique of Israel into antisemitic tropes of the most noxious variety."

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Retrieved 2026-03-24 05:30:49 UTC
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