Uncle Oswald

Uncle Oswald, or Oswald Hendryks Cornelius, is a fictional character created by Roald Dahl. He is the main character in the novel My Uncle Oswald (1979).

Fictional biography

Oswald Hendryks Cornelius, "the greatest fornicator of all time", is a womanizing gadabout, whose motto is never to sleep with one woman twice. He is an oenophile, scorpion and walking stick collector, opera lover, and an expert on Chinese porcelain. He is also wealthy, apparently as a result of morally dubious, maybe even illegal, schemes. In "The Visitor" Oswald stays with a wealthy Syrian and his beautiful wife and daughter; in "Bitch" he funds a scheme to create the perfect aphrodisiac; and in My Uncle Oswald he leads a scheme to sell famous men's sperm. The stories and novel he appears in are introduced by an unnamed nephew (hence the prefix "Uncle") who, on Oswald's passing, inherits his life-spanning diaries, which contain the details of his many exploits.

Appearances

Novels

• My Uncle Oswald

Short stories

• "The Visitor"
• "Bitch"

Reviews

In his 1980 review, Vance Bourjaily called "My Uncle Oswald": "summer reading", while Christopher Lehmann-Haupt called it "a festival of bad taste."