The Witches

The Witches is a 1983 children's novel by Roald Dahl, described as a dark fantasy and set partly in Norway and partly in England. It was first published by Jonathan Cape in London with illustrations by Quentin Blake, who had worked with Dahl before.

The premise is a whole secret society rather than a single antagonist. Child-hating groups of witches exist quietly in every country, ruled by the Grand High Witch, who travels to England to organise the project of turning the country's children into mice. The narrator is an English boy whose Norwegian grandmother knows the folklore in detail, so the novel supplies its rules through her explanations before it puts them to use.

The book was ranked eighty-first among all-time best children's novels in a 2012 survey published by School Library Journal, and in 2019 the BBC placed it on a list of the hundred most influential novels. Adaptations include an unabridged audio reading by Lynn Redgrave, a stage production, and a Royal Mail commemorative stamp featuring the Grand High Witch in 2012. Its tone is deliberately frightening for its age group, which is why it is often described as dark.