The Complete Short Stories of Saki

One of the funniest writers in the English language… Saki was incapable of writing a dull sentence, but the final lines of his short stories are works of art in themselves * Daily Telegraph *Read Saki, shiver, then smile. In his mixture of the exotic with the wholly English, of brazen charm with unapologetic spite, he stands alone * Independent *Saki writes like an enemy. Society has bored him to the point of murder. Our laughter is only a note or two short of a scream of fear – V. S. PritchettSaki’s stories are highly relevant to any society in which convention is confused with morality, and all societies confuse convention with morality, so he’ll always be relevant – Will SelfSaki remains, from a distance of a hundred years, just about the sharpest, cruellest, funniest and most elegant short story writer in our language… Saki is like a perfect martini but with absinthe stirred in…heady, delicious and dangerous. Enjoy – Stephen FryThese stories are cut-glass beauties, pitiless and hard-edged and constantly poking fun at the pretensions of the middle and upper classes… Crisp, funny and perfectly targeted – Naomi Alderman * Guardian *His stories…bear the hallmarks of Oscar Wilde and Henry James, are as funny as Wilde, Wodehouse and Waugh, possess plotting exquisite enough to bear significant elaboration but rarely last longer than three pages, and are brought off with a wonderfully light touch, while presenting a disturbingly chilling portrait of humankind * Guardian *My favourite writer of all time is the satirical Edwardian writer HH Munro, who was also known as Saki. He had a very black sense of humour and some of his short stories are so incredibly dark and irreverent that you just can’t help but laugh – Clarissa Dickson Wright * Daily Express *His tales are loaded with death and destruction, as well as a heavy dose of flippancy and cynicism. They are peppered with clever, cutting epigrams and usually end with a grim twist. And there are animals - lots of them * Guardian *Saki is among those few writers, inspirational when read at an early age, who definitely retain their magic when revisited decades later – Christopher Hitchens

Saki is the pen name of H. H. Munro, born in 1870 in Burma and educated in England. He began his writing career as a journalist and foreign correspondent but later turned to writing fiction - predominantly short stories for which he is best-remembered - as well as one history book. He was 43 when the First World War started. Although he was beyond the age of conscription, and although he was offered an officer’s commission, Saki joined the army as an ordinary trooper. He was killed in 1916 in France by a German sniper.

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