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The Complete Saki (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
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Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: H. H. Munro
Publisher: Penguin Classics
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Our Price: $12.24
You Save: $ 5.76 ( 32% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: H. H. Munro
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Average Customer Rating:
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The Complete Saki (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780141180786
ISBN: 0141180781
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 960
Publication Date: 1998-05-01
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780141180786
ISBN: 0141180781
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 960
Publication Date: 1998-05-01
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Editorial Review of The Complete Saki (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
Customer Reviews of The Complete Saki (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
Customer Rating: 
Review Summary: A great joy to read
Review: Hector Hugh Munro, who used the pen name Saki, is, along with Guy de Maupassant, O. Henry and Anton Chekhov, one of the most best writers of short stories in literature. This collection is well worth reading. I rate it at four stars because compared to the other aforementioned writers it has too narrow a focus. Saki's stories are almost unfailingly humorous and concerned with the foibles of upper middle class British society in the period from about 1890 until 1915. In this sense they lack the variety of O. Henry, the poignancy of Maupassant and the scope and harsh reality of Chekhov. The humor is also very, very British. This evaluation may be a bit unfair especially since all the other reviewers have given it 5 stars.
Having said all that, the stories are still very enjoyable and a delight to read. Many of the stories are about cynical young men, children behaving badly and often involve animals. Some are quite clever and funny in any culture. Most of them are quite short--three or four pages--and thus can be read in a brief period. One can read them while eating a meal, when riding on a bus or train, or in any situation where you have a few minutes to spare.
The book is divided into six parts, but this division is largely artificial and without real meaning. The first part (Reginald) deals with the affairs of a young man of that name. Reginald is a young man given to making sharp repartees to disrupt dinner parties. For example in the first story, which bears his name, he asks guests to their utter confusion, "What did the Caspian see?" In Reginald On Besetting Sins we find, "the cook was a good cook as cooks go; and as cooks go she went."
Part three, The Chronicles of Clovis, deals for the most part with another young man, the irrepressible Clovis, a seventeen-year-old scamp. Here we find perhaps Saki's most famous story, The Unrest Cure. Clovis is riding on a train when he overhears a man saying how boring his life is. Noting the man's address Clovis vows to make it less so. Upon arriving home the man receives a telegram saying that the bishop is coming to his house and his secretary will arrive shortly to make the arrangements. The secretary, Clovis of course, soon arrives and begins disrupting the life of the household. He informs the man that the bishop has arrived and is in the library and that the real purpose of the bishop's visit is to kill all the Jews in the town! The man is horrified and proposes to leave to get the police but Clovis tells him that the house is surrounded by people (including boy scouts!) with orders to kill anyone attempting to leave. Shortly thereafter local Jews began to show up in response to telegrams sent to them by Clovis. Chaos abounds and the man's boredom is definitely cured.
Saki's descriptions of people get right to the point: "He has delightful hair and a weak mouth. I shall take him with me to Homborg (sic) or Cairo." He describes a corpulent musician getting up from a nap thusly: "the musician's flabby redundant figure sat up in bewildered semi-consciousness like an ice cream that had been taught to beg." Then there is this description of the Salvation Army: " It was quite interesting to be at close quarters with them, they're so absolutely different to what they used to be when I first remembered them in the eighties. They used to go about unkempt and disheveled, in a sort of smiling rage with the world, and now they're spruce and jaunty and flamboyantly decorative, like a geranium bed with religious convictions."
Some of the better stories include The Lull about a politician who takes a respite from campaigning with the help of a precocious little girl; Dusk, a story about the dangers of believing people who ask you for money; The Story Teller, in which a man on a train tells a story to some children that they will never forget; Forewarned, in which a young woman who has been living isolated in a rural area all her life suddenly goes to visit in the city and finds the politics too much for her sensibilities; and Hyacinth, in which a small boy by that name disrupts an election.
The best story in my opinion is the one that isn't funny. The Image of the Lost Soul tells of a church statue (the Lost Soul) and a small bird who become friends. But there friendship proves fleeting and the church bell rings out the moral--"after joy comes sorrow." The last few stories are about war (Saki served in WW I and was killed by a sniper in 1916) and tend to be more reflective.
All in all these stories should not be missed.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Fine Collection
Review: For a perfect summer read try picking up an old favorite... this collection of the work of Saki (real name: Hector Hugh Munro) includes over 130 short stories, three novels and three plays and sports an introduction by Noel Coward. Though written 100 years ago, this vast body of work is amazingly fresh and contemporary. Many of the stories are under four pages long, but they manage to paint amusing pictures of the privileged class as seen through the eyes of an obviously gay, brilliant and somewhat bored young man who uses a sharp knife to pry up the upper crust and expose what's beneath. Sample the stories - his work is available on line - [.........]
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Master of the Sublime - H.H. Munro - aka Saki
Review: Saki is the consummate stylist and chronicler of a stuffy Victorian England nearing the end of its reign and world dominance. He savors the comedy of manners with all its many class-based restrictions and inbred peculiarities and finds ways to highlight--through ironic twists of fate--the inherent and underlying pathos of a people so stuck on themselves they frequently are tripped up on their own vanities.Therein lies the "beauty" of a Saki short story: he fleshes out the quirks and peccadillos of human nature--its pomp and its farcical facets--and we come away the better (and ennobled) for it. If it's a Saki story--there's subtle mirth and magical missteps awaiting the reader.One wonders what great additions to his rather slim body of work there would've been had he not perished--fighting in the war that was supposed to end all war: World War I.... A man of "privilege" who purposely sought no special dispensation during the vicissitudes of warfare when mustard gas hung ominously in the air and men were often taken by disease sooner than they were by enemy fire. A short life it was for the "old boy," H.H. Munro...one that lives on in his brilliant body of work....Well-told tales that will live on as long as questing readers come calling at the "House of Saki."
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: -
Review: Saki (H.H. Munro) writes with a facility and style that guides the reader unerringly to the surprise denouement in which propriety is set on its head. His bitingly clever turns of phrase are made bearable by his eagerness to challenge and thwart the norms of society.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: What Frothy Fun!
Review: If you like your reading to be effervescent with a bit of vinegar thrown in for effect, look no further. Saki is hilarious at his best--which is most of the time. His stories of the misadventures of his alter-ego Reginald are unsurpassed.
"The Open Window" is here-it is considered by Saki aficionados to be his best story and who am I to argue. On first reading, it has the same effect as a pail of ice water - a shock to the system, but bracing!
And for the perfect practical joke, described deliciously, do read, "Reginald's Christmas Revel." You will never look at a paper bag in quite the same way, thereafter.
Sadly, his life was cut short by the Great War. One of his own bon mots will say it all: "To die before being painted by Sargent is to go to heaven prematurely." Amen.
Review Summary: A great joy to read
Review: Hector Hugh Munro, who used the pen name Saki, is, along with Guy de Maupassant, O. Henry and Anton Chekhov, one of the most best writers of short stories in literature. This collection is well worth reading. I rate it at four stars because compared to the other aforementioned writers it has too narrow a focus. Saki's stories are almost unfailingly humorous and concerned with the foibles of upper middle class British society in the period from about 1890 until 1915. In this sense they lack the variety of O. Henry, the poignancy of Maupassant and the scope and harsh reality of Chekhov. The humor is also very, very British. This evaluation may be a bit unfair especially since all the other reviewers have given it 5 stars.
Having said all that, the stories are still very enjoyable and a delight to read. Many of the stories are about cynical young men, children behaving badly and often involve animals. Some are quite clever and funny in any culture. Most of them are quite short--three or four pages--and thus can be read in a brief period. One can read them while eating a meal, when riding on a bus or train, or in any situation where you have a few minutes to spare.
The book is divided into six parts, but this division is largely artificial and without real meaning. The first part (Reginald) deals with the affairs of a young man of that name. Reginald is a young man given to making sharp repartees to disrupt dinner parties. For example in the first story, which bears his name, he asks guests to their utter confusion, "What did the Caspian see?" In Reginald On Besetting Sins we find, "the cook was a good cook as cooks go; and as cooks go she went."
Part three, The Chronicles of Clovis, deals for the most part with another young man, the irrepressible Clovis, a seventeen-year-old scamp. Here we find perhaps Saki's most famous story, The Unrest Cure. Clovis is riding on a train when he overhears a man saying how boring his life is. Noting the man's address Clovis vows to make it less so. Upon arriving home the man receives a telegram saying that the bishop is coming to his house and his secretary will arrive shortly to make the arrangements. The secretary, Clovis of course, soon arrives and begins disrupting the life of the household. He informs the man that the bishop has arrived and is in the library and that the real purpose of the bishop's visit is to kill all the Jews in the town! The man is horrified and proposes to leave to get the police but Clovis tells him that the house is surrounded by people (including boy scouts!) with orders to kill anyone attempting to leave. Shortly thereafter local Jews began to show up in response to telegrams sent to them by Clovis. Chaos abounds and the man's boredom is definitely cured.
Saki's descriptions of people get right to the point: "He has delightful hair and a weak mouth. I shall take him with me to Homborg (sic) or Cairo." He describes a corpulent musician getting up from a nap thusly: "the musician's flabby redundant figure sat up in bewildered semi-consciousness like an ice cream that had been taught to beg." Then there is this description of the Salvation Army: " It was quite interesting to be at close quarters with them, they're so absolutely different to what they used to be when I first remembered them in the eighties. They used to go about unkempt and disheveled, in a sort of smiling rage with the world, and now they're spruce and jaunty and flamboyantly decorative, like a geranium bed with religious convictions."
Some of the better stories include The Lull about a politician who takes a respite from campaigning with the help of a precocious little girl; Dusk, a story about the dangers of believing people who ask you for money; The Story Teller, in which a man on a train tells a story to some children that they will never forget; Forewarned, in which a young woman who has been living isolated in a rural area all her life suddenly goes to visit in the city and finds the politics too much for her sensibilities; and Hyacinth, in which a small boy by that name disrupts an election.
The best story in my opinion is the one that isn't funny. The Image of the Lost Soul tells of a church statue (the Lost Soul) and a small bird who become friends. But there friendship proves fleeting and the church bell rings out the moral--"after joy comes sorrow." The last few stories are about war (Saki served in WW I and was killed by a sniper in 1916) and tend to be more reflective.
All in all these stories should not be missed.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Fine Collection
Review: For a perfect summer read try picking up an old favorite... this collection of the work of Saki (real name: Hector Hugh Munro) includes over 130 short stories, three novels and three plays and sports an introduction by Noel Coward. Though written 100 years ago, this vast body of work is amazingly fresh and contemporary. Many of the stories are under four pages long, but they manage to paint amusing pictures of the privileged class as seen through the eyes of an obviously gay, brilliant and somewhat bored young man who uses a sharp knife to pry up the upper crust and expose what's beneath. Sample the stories - his work is available on line - [.........]
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Master of the Sublime - H.H. Munro - aka Saki
Review: Saki is the consummate stylist and chronicler of a stuffy Victorian England nearing the end of its reign and world dominance. He savors the comedy of manners with all its many class-based restrictions and inbred peculiarities and finds ways to highlight--through ironic twists of fate--the inherent and underlying pathos of a people so stuck on themselves they frequently are tripped up on their own vanities.Therein lies the "beauty" of a Saki short story: he fleshes out the quirks and peccadillos of human nature--its pomp and its farcical facets--and we come away the better (and ennobled) for it. If it's a Saki story--there's subtle mirth and magical missteps awaiting the reader.One wonders what great additions to his rather slim body of work there would've been had he not perished--fighting in the war that was supposed to end all war: World War I.... A man of "privilege" who purposely sought no special dispensation during the vicissitudes of warfare when mustard gas hung ominously in the air and men were often taken by disease sooner than they were by enemy fire. A short life it was for the "old boy," H.H. Munro...one that lives on in his brilliant body of work....Well-told tales that will live on as long as questing readers come calling at the "House of Saki."
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: -
Review: Saki (H.H. Munro) writes with a facility and style that guides the reader unerringly to the surprise denouement in which propriety is set on its head. His bitingly clever turns of phrase are made bearable by his eagerness to challenge and thwart the norms of society.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: What Frothy Fun!
Review: If you like your reading to be effervescent with a bit of vinegar thrown in for effect, look no further. Saki is hilarious at his best--which is most of the time. His stories of the misadventures of his alter-ego Reginald are unsurpassed.
"The Open Window" is here-it is considered by Saki aficionados to be his best story and who am I to argue. On first reading, it has the same effect as a pail of ice water - a shock to the system, but bracing!
And for the perfect practical joke, described deliciously, do read, "Reginald's Christmas Revel." You will never look at a paper bag in quite the same way, thereafter.
Sadly, his life was cut short by the Great War. One of his own bon mots will say it all: "To die before being painted by Sargent is to go to heaven prematurely." Amen.