The Best Of Saki

If you enjoy your humour like you enjoy your dangerous animals: elegant, well-groomed, and capable of ruining a respectable afternoon in seconds, then Saki is about to become your favourite bad influence.

The Best of Saki (1977, Picador; ISBN 0330247328) gathers H.H. Munro’s short stories into a neat little package of social sabotage. These are tales from Edwardian drawing rooms where everyone is impeccably dressed, perfectly mannered, and one small remark away from disaster. Saki’s genius is that he makes the polite world look like the most fragile thing imaginable — a delicate soufflé of etiquette, ready to collapse if a child lies convincingly enough or an aunt’s moral certainty is nudged half an inch off centre.

Saki writes with a smile that never shows its teeth until it’s too late. His characters are the sort of people who say “How charming” while meaning “I will never recover from this.” There are overbearing relatives, ridiculous social rules, smug adults, and children who behave like miniature anarchists with excellent diction. The tone is light, the sentences are sharp, and the outcomes are often… not what a well-brought-up person would call “appropriate.” Which is precisely the point.

And then there’s that signature Saki ingredient: the sudden intrusion of the wild, the cruel, or the absurd into a world that believes it is perfectly in control. Sometimes it’s an animal. Sometimes it’s a lie. Sometimes it’s just a perfectly timed act of petty vengeance. But the effect is always the same: civilisation is revealed to be a thin layer of varnish over human pettiness and appetite — and Saki’s job is to scratch it.

The irony is that these stories are short, often delicate, and read like little confections — yet they leave a surprisingly dark aftertaste. You’ll laugh, and then you’ll think, “Good heavens, that was grim,” and then you’ll laugh again because grimness, in Saki’s hands, is part of the entertainment. He doesn’t moralise. He simply observes, with surgical calm, that people are ridiculous and sometimes deserve what happens to them.

This Picador 1977 edition is ideal for dipping in: one story at a time, preferably with tea, and preferably when you don’t have any urgent faith in humanity to maintain. It’s the perfect book for the bedside, the commute, or the moment you need reminding that wit can be both a comfort and a weapon.

Condition: Good, meaning it’s a solid, readable copy — exactly what you want for Saki: something you can pick up, flick open, and be instantly transported to a world where social niceties are treated with the respect they deserve (i.e., none). A copy with a little life in it suits these stories perfectly; they were made to be read, shared, and quoted with a wicked grin.

Perfect for: lovers of sharp short fiction, fans of dry British wit, anyone who enjoys satire that doesn’t apologise, and readers who like their laughs delivered with a stiletto.

Sold by Crappy Old Books — because sometimes the best comfort read is a book that politely dismantles civilisation and calls it entertainment.

Keep browsing: See more Fiction books Other books by HH Munro