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Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) |
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Novelist and short-story
writer, born 1870 in Akyab, West Myanmar (formerly Burma). Educated in England
at Bedford Grammar School, he returned to Burma and joined the police force in
1893. He went to London in 1896, took up writing for the Westminster Gazette,
and from 1902 was the Balkans correspondent for the Morning Post.
He is best known for his short stories, humorous, satiric, supernatural, and macabre, which are highly individual, full of eccentric wit and unconventional situations. Collections include Reginald (1904) and Beasts and Superbeasts (1914). His novels The Unbearable Bassington (1912) and When William Came (1913) show his gifts as a social satirist of his contemporary upper-class Edwardian world. He was killed in 1916 near Beaumont-Hamel in France during World War 1, having volunteered for active service despite being over 40. |