Author: Hector Hugh Munro
Publisher: Indialog Publications
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 271
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8187981180
Description
In most of the writings in this collection, Saki will be seen sending shivers down the spine of the reader through astonishing twist and practical jokes.
Through his immortal short stories and other writings, Saki has created some of the most loved stereotypes that are almost caricaturesque in their droll exaggeration. Aunts are the unfailing tyrants in their unreasonable cruelty or downright imbecility. Families eat porridge, believe in the weather forecast and have no sense of humor, No one falls in love and if love does happen, it’s placid love between placidly lovable couples. Isms are grotesque jokes with warped punch-lines; patriotism ends up in Parisian frocks worn with an English accent, and socialism is what can get one stuck in the Turkish bath or with half-done coiffeur.
If there is a voice of protest against social pretension, then it comes from derisive, incorrigible romancers, were-wolves, truth-speaking cats, children that resist oppressive adults, men that adopt the manners of their pets, and pranksters that subvert the education system. In Reginald and Clovis Saki Creates the irrepressible enfant-terrible of the Edwardian society that gets the better of their mocking cynicism.
Although it’s the Edwardian society that is at the receiving end of Saki’s merciless barbs, the readers would find themselves in a milieu not completely alien from their own. And that is the secret of Saki’s magic that recreates itself in this collection. In most of the writings here, Saki will be seen sending shivers down the spine of the reader through astonishing twists and practical jokes. The devises he used as unrest-cure for the conservative social scene of his times still have the power to grab the modern readers by their collar and shake them out of the torpid adjustments they make with the society at large
Contents
Reginald on Christmas Presents
Reginald on the Academy
Reginald's Choir Treat
Reginald on Worries
Reginald on Besetting Sins
Reginald's Drama
Regimald's Rubaiyat
Reginald in Russia
The Reticence of Lady Anne
The Sex That Doesn't Shop
Gabriel-Ernest
The Saint and The Goblin
The Soul of Laploshka
The Bag
Cross Currents
The Mouse
Esme
Tobermory
Mrs. Packletide's Tiger
Hermann TheIrasciple-The Story of the Great Weep
The Unrest-Cure
Sredni Vashtar
The Jesting of Arlington Stringham
Adrian
The Chaplet
The Quest
Filboid Studge, The Story of a Mouse That Helped
The Way To The Dairy
The Peace of Mowsle Barton
The Hounds of Fate
The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope
The Remoulding Of Groby Lington
The She-Wolf
Laura
The Hen
The Open Window
The Cobweb
The Lull
The Romancers
The Schartz-Metterklume Method
The Seventh Pullet
Cousin Teresa
The Byzantine Omelette
the Stake
The Stalled Ox
The Story-Teller
The Name-Day
The Lumber-Room
Fur
The Philanthropist and The Happy Cat
Louise
TEA
Mark
The Bull
Shock Tactics
The Seven Cream Jugs
The Image of the Lost Soul
The Square Egg
The Achievement of the Cat