The Toys of Peace, and Other Papers

Saki wrote the kind of prose that makes other humorists look like they're trying hard. These thirty-ish stories, published in 1919 just before the author perished in the trenches of World War I, slice through Edwardian society with surgical precision and enormous delight. The title story finds Harvey Bope attempting to civilize his nephews by replacing their war toys with educational models of municipal buildings and historical peacemakers, only to watch the boys cheerfully reinterpret these as participants in invented atrocities. This is Saki at his finest: the joke lands not once but twice, on Harvey's earnest solemnity and on the notion that human nature can be so easily rerouted. Elsewhere, children systematically outwit their elders, social climbers fall into traps of their own making, and the polite surfaces of respectable life crack to reveal something considerably more interesting underneath. Saki's characters speak in perfect, devastating sentences. His endings arrive like a door slamming in a long hallway. If you prize wit that earns its keep, these stories are是不可抗力的.