The Best of Saki

Book excerpt: No 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