Book Review – Masterpieces of World Fiction: Selected Stories – Saki

 

There is the Taj Mahal, built with decades of effort and mountains of marble blocks. Then there is ‘David’, built with a fraction of all that effort and material, but equally marvelous nevertheless. Likewise, there are Valmikis and Homers of the world, churning out magnificent epics like Ramayana and Iliad, containing thousands of lines of beautiful prose. Then there are people like Saki, who have written equally relishable literature, using less than a fraction of those words, but the magnificence of which is as good as those of the aforementioned works. This collection of short stories is a testimony to that fact. 

Saki, or Hector Hugh Munro, is one of those blessed writers in whose hands the reader becomes a helpless puppet, feeling the emotions that the talented writer wants one to feel. You smile while reading some lines, grimace while reading others and yet feel a deep sense of pain during some other part of the work. Though he has the knack of conveying all the emotions through his writing, humor seems to have been his forte. Going through this book, there were at least a dozen occasions when I found myself grinning heartily. Such was the beauty of his writing and wit!

One negative about this anthology though. The compiler has made a glaring omission of a major part of the story ‘Esme’. I was wondering as to why the story has ended abruptly, without making any sense whatsoever. An online search helped me read the rest of the text and relish the tale. Incompetent editing!

Finishing the book, I felt a deep sense of sadness recalling the fact that the life of this literary genius ended too early and in a violent manner. Wish he had lived longer and produced more works of literary glory. Wars are unwanted human inventions indeed!

A.