SREDNI VASHTAR - Sardonic Tales by Saki (aka Hector Hugh Munro)
 
Digital Download

312 p.

This collection brings together all of the sharpest, darkest, weird and macabre tales of Edwardian satirist Hector Hugh Munro (who adopted the pen-name, 'Saki'). Among the best of these are the stories of the unlikely god Sredni Vashtar, a beautiful young werewolf, the dying and unmourned Laura, and the laughter of the youthful and merciless Pan.

Saki brings to the supernatural tale a studied nonchalance and a terse remorselessness in the telling. 'Wittily somber and elegantly grim' was one well-turned contemporary evocation of his work. All the trappings of the Gothic, and the later antiquarian, ghost or horror story, have been quite banished from his work. There is no labored building-up of portent, no labyrinthine twisting of devious history, no elaborate word-painting to conjure up atmosphere. Instead, Saki achieves a fastidious precision and economy. In his mastery of the sardonic and his ironic, adroit deployment of the supernatural, he has few equals.