She tells him a real witch looks exactly like an ordinary woman, but there are ways of telling whether she is a witch, such as real witches have claws instead of fingernails, which they hide by wearing gloves are bald, which they hide by wearing wigs that make them break out in rashes have square-ended feet with no toes which they hide by wearing small, pointy shoes that cause them discomfort have eyes with pupils that change colors have blue spit which they use for ink and have large nostrils which they use to sniff out children, who, to a witch, smell of dog's droppings the dirtier the child, the less likely a witch can smell them.Īs specified in the parents' will, the narrator and his grandmother return to England, where he was born and had attended school, and where the house he is inheriting is located. The boy loves all his grandmother's stories, but he is especially enthralled by the stories about real-life witches who she says are horrific female demons who seek to kill human children.

The story is narrated from the perspective of an unnamed seven-year-old English boy, who goes to live with his Norwegian grandmother after his parents are killed in a tragic car accident.

The book was adapted into an unabridged audio reading by Lynn Redgrave, a stage play and a two-part radio dramatization for the BBC, a 1990 film directed by Nicolas Roeg which starred Anjelica Huston and Rowan Atkinson, a 2008 opera by Marcus Paus and Ole Paus, and a 2020 film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Anne Hathaway. In 2012, the Grand High Witch appeared on a Royal Mail commemorative postage stamp. In 2019, the BBC listed The Witches on its list of the 100 most influential novels. In 2012, the book was ranked number 81 among all-time best children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a US monthly. It received mixed reviews and was criticized for misogyny. The Witches was originally published in 1983 by Jonathan Cape in London, with illustrations by Quentin Blake who had previously collaborated with Dahl. The witches are ruled by the vicious and powerful Grand High Witch, who arrives in England to organize her plan to turn all of the children there into mice. The story is set partly in Norway and partly in England, and features the experiences of a young English boy and his Norwegian grandmother in a world where child-hating societies of witches secretly exist in every country. The Witches is a children's dark fantasy novel by British author Roald Dahl.

Roald dahl the witches novel