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In the book:

"The wonderful tale of Henry Sugar and six more"

Dahl claims the story to be true, further the name of the man isn't revealed, and the name "Henry Sugar" is used.

I have read about Kuda Bux (Khudah Baksh), the man who inspired him to write the story. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuda_Bux). I want to know if the person who was called Henry Sugar and his two assistants, John Winston and Max Engelman, actually narrated the real story to Dahl.

The story was on the bizarre side. He's written about his ordeal with the two, and how Henry opened 21 orphanages. When I tried searching, I couldn't find much info. Same with the organization ORPHANGES SA.

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The above picture shows the book Henry read in the library. Is this book real? I couldn't find anything on this either.

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From what I've been able to find, it appears to me that Dahl took the real story of Kuda Bux, attributed 2 different aspects of his life to 2 different characters (Sugar and Khan,) and then added a little flair. Though, surprisingly, the added flair had to do with the more mundane, human traits, and mostly concerned Henry Sugar. Basically, he made Khan's origin story a little more colorful and created Henry Sugar out of Bux's less noble traits. Kuda Bux admitted he originally wanted to learn the "magic of yoga" for fame and fortune. He ostensibly experienced a sort of growth similar to what Henry Sugar experiences, only not as pronounced. So, I believe Dahl created Henry Sugar from that detail in order to draw a more dramatic arc of character development.

So, the most incredible part of the story is actually based on reality, regardless of whether Kuda Bux could actually do what he claimed. But "eyeless sight," like "remote viewing," is an accepted discipline in certain schools of yoga and Buddhism. There's also a man named Alexander Levit who was featured on Stan Lee's Superhumans several years ago who demonstrates this exact same phenomenon. It's truly a fascinating episode. My point being, real or not, "paroptic vision," as it's sometimes called, has been claimed by many people for over 1000 years.

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    Hi, welcome to SF&F. So what you're saying is that there isn't a real-life person who corresponds to "Henry Sugar" and that is a character created by Dahl? Please be clear about how you answer the question.
    – DavidW
    Commented Oct 12, 2023 at 19:56

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