Saki was the pen name of British author Hector Hugh Munro, a witty, often macabre author who wrote an appreciative novel of the German conquest of England and then (in his forties, mind you!) signed up to die on the Belgian front during World War I. He's considered a master of the short story and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. His stories are generally short and often memorable. If you haven't read him before, you're in for a treat.

Author Biography

Hector Hugh Munro (1870 - 1916), better known by the pen name Saki and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, he himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noel Coward and P. G. Wodehouse. Besides his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was customary at the time and then collected into several volumes), he wrote a full-length play, The Watched Pot, in collaboration with Charles Maude; two one-act plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire, the only book published under his own name; a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; the episodic The Westminster Alice (a parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland); and When William Came, subtitled A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns, a fantasy about a future German invasion and occupation of Britain.