The Witches (book)
The Witches (orig. The Witches ) is a children's book published in 1983 by the English writer Roald Dahl. The German edition was published in the only previous translation by Sybil Gräfin Schönfeldt 1986.
Action
The book told from the perspective of a first-person narrator, the story of a boy who lives with his grandmother in Norway. She tells him about "real witches", which are quite different than in the fairy tale: Real witches have no hair, no toes have claws instead of fingernails, large nostrils and blue spit. The really weird in witches is that they may look like ordinary women.
Witches hate children and their purpose in life is to lie in wait for them and enchant them. The grandmother tells the story of children who disappeared and were even transformed by witches. It explains how to recognize a witch and how you can protect yourself from it. So you have, for example, to be protected from the sense of smell of a witch, be dirty, or you see a suspicious woman in the eye and the pupil color changes regularly.
When his parents died, pull the two to England. While he is building a tree house, a woman tries to get him to come to her so she can give him a snake. But he stays away from her until she disappears. The woman was a witch and he has kept to the warnings.
One day they take a vacation in a hotel, because the grandmother had suffered pneumonia. The boy wants his white mice teach tricks and hides in the hotel ballroom. Shortly thereafter, the KGVK comes (Royal Society for the Prevention of child abuse ), consisting of hundreds of women. Hidden behind a screen, he sees that the women in truth are witches and the company is just a cover. He has appeared in the middle of a witch convention and he sees the high and Grand Master Witch. They announced a plan to turn all the children of England with a magic potion in mice so that they would then unknowingly killed by their teachers as vermin.
Soon after, the witches camouflage again to let the little Bruno. The Grand Master Witch has lured him with the promise of chocolate, to demonstrate the effect of their magic potion. Before the eyes of all witches Bruno is successfully transformed into a mouse. As the narrator tries to escape, he is discovered and also turned into a mouse. Luckily, his voice and his character have been preserved, as in Bruno. Together, it is possible the two to come up to the grandmother. All three want to prevent the other children of England suffers the same fate. The boy and his grandmother hatch a plan: The grandmother leaves from your balcony the boy down on a knit stocking in the room of the high and Grand Master Witch, which is just below her to steal the potion, which will also work. Then the boy cheating with the potion into the hotel kitchen and therefore offset the dinner of witches. So all witches (including their leader ) turned into mice and slain by the hotel staff. The children of England are saved. Bruno is a mouse, and as such returns to his family.
The boy moved with his grandmother to Norway, where the two forge a new plan: They want to make the mouse -maker himself, traveling from country to country, to finally rid the world of witches throughout the company.
Films
The book was made into a film in 1990 by Nicolas Roeg first time. The large upper Witch was played by Anjelica Huston, and the then little-known Rowan Atkinson played the owner Mr Stringer. Jim Henson Productions helped with the presentation of the mice.
Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro announced that he wants new movie of the book. When the remake comes out in theaters, is not known, only that it is currently (as of 2006 ) is in the script phase.