Böcker av Saki

Reginald in Russia was written in 1910 by Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 - 14 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki and also frequently as H. H. Munro. He was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and culture. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, he himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward and P. G. Wodehouse.

When William Came: A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns is a novel written by the British author Saki (the pseudonym of Hector Hugh Munro) and published in November 1913. It is set several years in what was then the future, after a war between Germany and Great Britain in which the former won. The "William" of the book''s title is Kaiser Wilhelm II of the House of Hohenzollern. The book chronicles life in London under German occupation and the changes that come with a foreign army''s invasion and triumph.

This anthology of anthologies contains H. H. Munro's excellent short stories, derived from a total of six compilations which were published over the course of twenty years.Containing all of his best regarded and famous short tales, as well as a sizeable host of hidden gems and lesser-known treasures, this gigantic compendium is comprehensive and certain to satisfy any fan of the author. The sensual, tantalising and distinctly moral nature of the stories usually rail against the stifling conventions of society - in the end, the natural world (and people acting naturally) tend to come out on top. The recognisable style with which Saki tells his tales make their endings, which are usually surprising and witty, a keynote feature of every story. Saki's ingrained wit and the casually biting nature of the topics he chooses often leads certain characters and the things they represent to ridicule, usually to the great satisfaction of the reader.

In two brilliant collections of stories, Reginald (1904) and Reginald in Russia (1910), which spanned the Edwardian period, Saki made his name as the predominant wit of the emergent twentieth century. As the new Georgian age dawned, his star was at its height:"..Sylvia, notwithstanding her name, was accustomed to nothing much more sylvan than "leafy Kensington." She looked on the country as something excellent and wholesome in its way, which was apt to become troublesome if you encouraged it overmuch...""...I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English...""...You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed."In this volume, first published in 1911, he introduced a new titular character, albeit with a huge resemblance to both Reginald and himself. Clovis Sangrail is unsurprisable, louche in conversation, thoroughly determined to avoid the banal. In this magnificent collection, he observes the ludicrous with an unswerving eye, and undermines it with rapier-like skill, while gleefully and covertly turning all to his advantage. Saki had announced himself as the brief Edwardian flame burnt itself out; with the brilliance of this volume he made it plain that he had no intention of fading away.

Saki made his name at the beginning of the Edwardian period with bitingly witty stories and political sketches, inheriting in many ways Oscar Wilde's vacated crown. His early main character, Reginald, was very like himself - a dissector of flabby respectability with a hilariously savage tongue. The first collected volume of Reginald stories was published in 1904. As the period drew on, publishing in a broad array of journals and magazines, Saki's range widened, baring the full extent of his genius for all to see: "Reginald sat in a corner of the Princess' salon and tried to forgive the furniture, which started out with an obvious intention of being Louis Quinze, but relapsed at frequent intervals into Wilhelm II." "Mrs Crick had a long family, and was therefore licensed, in the eyes of her world, to have a short temper..." "Possessed of only moderate means, he was able to live comfortably within his income, and still more comfortably within those of various tolerantly disposed associates." "Vanessa began to arrive at the conclusion that a husband who added a roving disposition to a settled income was a mixed blessing. It was one thing to go to the end of the world; it was quite another thing to make oneself at home there. Even respectability seemed to lose some of its virtue when one practised it in a tent." "There's always a chance that one of them might turn out depraved and vicious, and then you could disown him. I've heard of that being done." "But, good gracious, you've got to educate him first. You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school." Finally, in 1910, this book, the best of the stories of the intervening years, was pulled together, including one last Reginald story which gave this new volume its title, as well as some of the pieces on which the height of Saki's reputation still rests: the sensual, eerie gallows-delight of Gabriel-Ernest; the joyful late-shock nervous tension of The Reticence of Lady Anne, The Bag and The Mouse; and the worldly gleeful ghostliness of The Soul of Laploshka. Also included is the notable little 'playlet' A Baker's Dozen.

The death of Oscar Wilde in 1900 left the position of The Wittiest Man in the World open and up for grabs. There seemed no clear inheritor. Then, over the next couple of years, in the pages of the Westminster Gazette, there slowly emerged someone whose political satires and sketches of society brought the Wildean barb screaming into the new century. He was a man by the name of Hector Munro, but very few knew that. All his pieces were signed with a name now synonymous with wit - simply Saki. - "Youth should suggest innocence." "But never act on the suggestion." - "Scandal is merely the compassionate allowance which the gay make to the humdrum." Saki's savage sketches of society were initially centred around one character, uncannily like himself. Reginald is dangerous. Brutally honest, not interested in mediocrity or convention, he cuts a hilarious swathe through more polite circles. These 15 pieces were first collected together in 1904. - "Her frocks are built in Paris, but she wears them with a strong English accent." - "The fashion just now is a Roman Catholic frame of mind with an Agnostic conscience: you get the mediaeval picturesqueness of the one with the modern conveniences of the other." - "I hate posterity - it's so fond of having the last word." Saki (Hector Munro) was born in Burma in 1870. He was sent to boarding school in Devon and Bedfordshire. Following his father into the Imperial Police, he was posted back to Burma. After contracting malaria, he returned to England where his writing career blossomed. When war broke out in 1914, he refused a commission and joined up as an ordinary trooper. During the Battle of the Ancre in 1916, whilst resting in a crater, he was shot by a German sniper. His output included some of the funniest stories in the English language, as well as plays, essays and two novels.

Fate had done her good service in providing her with Henry for a brother, but Francesca could well set the plaguy malice of the destiny that had given her Comus for a son. The boy was one of those untamable young lords of misrule . . . he was irresponsible and ungrateful -- the focus of his corner of British society. And what could be done with him. . . ? Send him off to the colonies, was what.

The buttoned-up world of the British upper classes is exploded by the brilliance, wit and audacity of Saki's bomb-like stories. In 'The Unrest Cure' the ordered home of a respectable country gent is rocked to its core. For punchlines, twists, satire and pure mirth, Saki's stories are second-to-none.

An eerie and disquieting tale about the dark side of adolescence, 'Gabriel-Ernest', written with Saki's trademark wit and mischievousness, is here presented with seven other uncanny and macabre tales, featuring Quentin Blake's inimitable illustrations.

A collection of eighteen deliciously disturbing tales by Saki, the Edwardian master of the short story. Saki's sharp satire pierces the polite veneer of country house parties, hunting meets and evenings round the pianola. Wild beasts stampede through the drawing room, servants suffer murderous delusions and sinister children plot revenge on their elders. These witty, macabre and sometimes bizarre stories cut through the social conventions of the Edwardian upper classes. 'Saki is like a perfect martini but with absinthe stirred in . . . heady, delicious and dangerous.' - Stephen Fry 'Saki is among those few writers, inspirational when read at an early age, who definitely retain their magic when revisited decades later.' - Christopher Hitchens 'These delicious, hilarious and yet surgical satires are amongst the finest short stories in the English language.' - Alexei Sayle 'I took it up to my bedroom, opened it casually and was unable to go to sleep until I had finished it.' - Noel Coward

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