Dahl's first published story, "Shot Down over Libya," appeared in Saturday Evening Post in August 1942. As Dahl's earliest work, it merits the attention of anyone interested in the remainder of his stories. The story stems from Dahl's experience in the Royal Air Force, heavily fictionalized, and introduces the element of violence which threads through his oeuvre. A pilot, a British flying his Hurricane in support of ground troops, meets up with an aerial ambush by Italian aircraft, which shoot him into the ground. He survives the crash, but is injured. Despite its slightness, "Shot Down" prefigures much of the later writing.

The short stories of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., collected in Welcome to the Monkey House, have been cited in comparison with those of Dahl for their darkly comic nature and often bleak assessments of human nature.

In Dahl's story "The...