Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life

Roald Dahl. Penguin Books, $13 (176pp) ISBN 978-0-14-011847-6

An antique dealer posing as a clergyman to help his business turn a larger profit is one of the con artists, poachers and thieves who inhabit the rustic community introduced in these seven stories. According to PW , ``Dahl shrewdly uses ostensibly simple fables as vehicles for richly mordant examinations of human foibles.'' (Apr.)

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