The Best of Saki

by Saki

Other authorsA. N. Wilson (Introduction), Roger Fereday (Illustrator)
Hardcover, 2007

Status

Available

Call number

813

Publication

Folio Society (2007), Edition: 1st, Hardcover, 272 pages. Introduced by A. N. Wilson. Illustrated by Roger Fereday. Bound in cloth and printed with a design by Roger Fereday. Set in Galliard. 272 pages with 20 black & white illustrations. 8½" × 5½".

Description

'They dazzle and delight' Graham GreeneNo writer has combined laughter with savagery more devastatingly than Saki. Though he died nearly ninety years ago, the blackness of his comedy is contemporary and his wit has lost none of its freshness and sparkle. At Edwardian tea tables, his elegant characters defend themselves against a malignant Nature waiting to kill and maim. As Tom Sharpe says, 'Step out through the French windows and you are in the realms of Pan . . .' This selection of the best of Saki's stories gives a new generation the opportunity to be dazzlingly entertained - and to discover a rare and original contribution to English literature. 'Start a Saki story and you will finish it. Finish one and you will start another, and having finished them all you will never forget them. They remain an addiction because they are much more than funny' Tom Sharpe… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member othersam
How to describe the stories of H.H. Munro? An unholy union of PG Wodehouse and David Lynch–? No, that doesn't really come close. Bloodthirsty ferret-gods, werewolves in the drawing-room, and a wickedly satirical eye for the mores of polite society: there has been nothing like these stories,
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anywhere, ever. See for yourself.
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LibraryThing member isabelx
I first read a book of Saki's stories when I was in primary school, and I found "Gabriel Ernest" rather frightening, even though nothing much actually happened 'on-screen'. "The Music on the Hill" has that same sense of unease, but luckily I didn't read it until I was older or it might have put me
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off the countryside altogether!

I love his descriptions of people- my favourite is "Bertie von Tahn, who was so depraved at seventeen that he had long ago given up trying to be any worse" (from Tobermory).
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LibraryThing member stef7sa
Apart from a few masterpieces like The Open Window these are mere short anecdotes from upper class life. Amusing but not really memorable.

Language

Original language

English

Local notes

Cats who learn to talk (to the discomfiture of their owners), bad-tempered aunts who get stuck in water tanks and the world’s most disgusting breakfast cereal, ‘Filboid Studge’, are just some of the fantastical inventions that populate the stories of Saki (H H Munro).
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