Roald Dahl’s children’s books are not exactly the nicest. Dahl’s characters glory in insults and meanness. The adults are generally horrible, the children gleefully vengeful; his bullies usually get their comeuppance. So when it came out recently that Dahl’s publishers had edited new editions of his work with the help of “sensitivity” readers, it was hardly surprising—and it was also hard not to laugh. How much can a handful of essentially cosmetic changes really do? On episode 63 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with literary critics Merve Emre and Christian Lorentzen about the unpleasantness in Dahl’s work, the interest his publishers may have in making the books more palatable, and how such edits fit into a long tradition of bowdlerizing fiction, especially that aimed at children.

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