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Man from the South PDF: The Story that Inspired Quentin Tarantino's Four Rooms



"Man from the South" is a short story by Roald Dahl originally published in Collier's in 1948. It has been adapted several times for television and film, including a 1960 version that aired as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and starred Steve McQueen, Neile Adams, and Peter Lorre.


After Carlos has a maid bring in the necessary supplies, he ties the American's left wrist to the table and the challenge begins. After the eighth successful strike, a woman bursts into the room and forces Carlos to drop the knife he has held ready to sever the American's finger. She explains that Carlos is mentally disturbed, having played this game so often in their home country that they had to flee in order to keep the authorities from committing him to a psychiatric hospital. He has taken 47 fingers and lost 11 cars, but no longer has anything of his own to bet with; she won it all from him long ago, including the car he claimed to own. As the narrator offers the key to her, she reaches out to take it with a hand that has only its thumb and one finger still attached.




man from the south pdf download




This short story was filmed as a 1960 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents titled "Man from the South", with a teleplay by William Fay and directed by Norman Lloyd. The episode stars Steve McQueen as the reluctant young gambler, Peter Lorre as Carlos, the man who bets his car, and Neile Adams (McQueen's real-life wife) as a ravishing young woman McQueen's character meets. The story takes place in Las Vegas, Nevada. The car itself is merely described as a convertible. Although the mysterious woman who abruptly storms in is wearing gloves, her index, middle, and ring fingers are missing. In this adaptation, as part of the dramatic denouement after the woman appears and effectively aborts the bet, the gambler (McQueen) tries to relieve the stress of the young woman (Adams) by lighting her cigarette. The lighter fails to start when flicked for this, a sly indicator of how narrowly the gambler avoided losing the bet.


In 1949, the Dahl story was adapted by June Thomson for an episode of Radio City Playhouse. The adaptation, titled "Collector's Item", split the 30 minute run time with an adaptation of a Ray Bradbury story, titled "The Lake". Shortly after meeting in the bar, Carlos offers the gambler his green 1948 Cadillac parked outside. Due to the tastes of the time, some of the more grisly details were omitted from the presentation. The independent observer (the "referee") character realizes the female is a victim of the gambler, but we do not learn the exact details of the gambler's previous bets.[1]


Dahl's story was adapted for a scene from the 1980 Tamil movie Ninaithale Inikkum, which involved a wager by a millionaire that a young man could not flick a cigarette into his lips ten times in a row without dropping it. The millionaire had put up his Toyota car against the young man's little finger. The young man managed it nine times in a row, but chickened out and refused a tenth attempt, thereby defaulting on the wager. The cigarette flick, in fact, was a signature move by iconic Tamil actor Rajinikanth.[2]


Notwithstanding the increasing availability of survey- and interview-based micro-level data on African migration, data availability remains extremely patchy and is generally focused on migration to Europe from a limited number of better-researched African countries, such as Morocco, Senegal, Ghana and South Africa. What has been particularly lacking so far, is macro-data that allows to map the overall evolution of the migration patterns from, to and within Africa over the past decades. This is not only important to gain a more fundamental insight into the factual evolution of African migration and to verify the validity of common perception of massive and increasing African migration, but it would also allow to contribute to the scholarly debate on the determinants of migration. On the one hand, this pertains to the debate on how development affect human mobility in which scholars have challenged conventional push-pull models by arguing that, particularly in poor societies, development increases rather than decreases levels of migration (Clemens, 2014; De Haas, 2010; Skeldon, 1997). On the other hand, conventional accounts of African migration tend to ignore the role of African states in shaping migration. This reflects the more general Eurocentric (destination-country) focus of migration research.


In order to fill these research gaps and gain a better understanding of the nature and causes of African migration, this paper analyses the evolution of migrations within, towards and from Africa in the post-colonial era, and explores the main factors explaining changes in the volume and the direction of these migrations. It will do so by drawing on new longitudinal databases containing data on migration stocks and flows, which have significantly extended the capacity to perform such analyses. Before embarking upon the empirical analysis, however, we will further explore the theoretical arguments that compel us to critically rethink role of development and states in migration processes.


African migration research is haunted by the lack of reliable official data and the absence of appropriate sampling frameworks in the form of census or survey data. Although these problems are far from resolved, recently, the availability of new migration databases has significantly expanded the scope to conduct analyses on migration from, to and within Africa2.


The volume of migration from, to and within Africa may be measured in absolute or relative numbers. As Table 2 shows, total stocks of migration from Africa to the rest of the world and within Africa have increased between 1960, 1980 and 2000, while migration from the rest of the world to Africa has decreased in absolute numbers.


Yet, to measure the intensity of emigration it is more appropriate to calculate the volume of migration in relation to the size of the population born in origin countries or destination countries. To measure emigration intensity we divided the numbers of emigrants from each country by the population born in the same country. In order to measure the relative importance of immigration from particular African or non-African countries in destination countries, we calculated immigration intensity by dividing the number of migrants from particular origin countries (African and non-African) in each destination country by the population born in each of these countries. It is important to emphasise that these measures for emigration and immigration intensities are based on migrant stock data, and should therefore not be confused with migration rates which are usually based on annual flow data. Migration intensities give a general estimate of the intensity of migration to and from particular countries in the recent past.


Figure 2 shows that the increase in extra-continental migration between 1960 and 1980 from Africa mainly reflects the high emigration intensity from Maghreb countries, but not from other regions3, where the emigration intensity to non-African destinations stays below one percent. The decrease in intra-continental mobility has been particularly stark in East Africa and to a lesser extent in Southern and Central and North Africa, while emigration from West Africa within the continent has remained on a consistently high level (see Fig. 2).


Figure 3 depicts the emigration intensity from the different African countries. The maps corroborate that African emigration is first and foremost about migration within the continent. Intra-continental emigration intensities tend to be highest in inland West-African countries (such as Mali and Burkina Faso), some Southern African countries and small states such as Lesotho and Eritrea, and tend to be low in the Maghreb (where most people migrate to Europe) and populous countries such as Nigeria, Egypt, and South Africa.


Figure 5 also highlights that there has also been a stark decrease in immigrant population originating from non-African countries in Africa. This sharp decrease in the presence of non-African immigrants in Africa, particularly in North and Central Africa seems to partly reflect the departure of colonial administrators and settlers after independence, such as the massive departure of French colons from Algeria. But it also reflects a sharp decrease in immigration from Europe, the Indian subcontinent (to East and Southern Africa) and Lebanon (mainly to West Africa). In some cases it reflects policies of ethnic cleansing, such as the deportation of Ugandan residents of Indian by the Idi Amin regime. In 2000, oil-rich Libya and Gabon remain among the rare countries that attract significant shares of non-African immigrants.


Figure 6 shows that although African migrants are still overwhelmingly located in African countries, the proportion of Africans living in (North) America and, particularly, Europe has increased. As we will see, because these are stock data, this underestimates the actual rate of increase of migration flows. The figures in Additional file 2 break these data down on the regional level and show that this increase in extra-continental has been general, although with strong regional variations. After Africa, Europe is the second continent of destination for migrants from West, East, Southern and Central Africa. Migrants from Southern Africa, however, also migrate to America and Oceania in significant numbers. Finally, the main destinations of North African migrants are Europe and Asia (Gulf countries), followed by Africa. This confirms that, with the exception of North Africa, migration out of Africa has been historically low.


Figure 8 shows that there has been a recent acceleration and diversification of extra-continental migration from sub-Saharan Africa, particularly to the United States and Canada. Figure 9 gives further detail on the evolution of non-African migration destination by region of origin. While North Africa is still overrepresented in extra-continental emigration, the share of other regions, particularly West and East Africa is increasing. Figure 10 reveals that North- and West- Africans are predominant in African migration to Europe, which seems related to the relative proximity to Europe and the historical role of labour recruitment in Francophone countries in the Maghreb but also in Senegal and Mali. 2ff7e9595c


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