{"product_id":"2026200012664-secondhand-saki-a-life-of-hector-hugh-munro","title":"Saki: A Life Of Hector Hugh Munro","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Worn\/faded, no tears\u003cbr\u003ePages: Tanning and foxing\u003cbr\u003eMarkings: Fair - Bumping on spine and corners. Rubbed edges.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBehind the razor-sharp wit and darkly comic tales of Edwardian England stood a man of extraordinary contradictions — H.H. Munro, known to the literary world as Saki — and A.J. Langguth's definitive biography illuminates every facet of his singular life. Born in Burma in 1870 and raised in the repressive household of tyrannical aunts in Devon, Munro channelled his turbulent upbringing into some of the most biting, brilliantly crafted short fiction in the English language, stories that skewered the hypocrisies of upper-class society with surgical precision. This volume pairs Langguth's meticulous biographical narrative with six short stories never before collected, offering readers an unparalleled portrait of the artist alongside rare primary texts.\n\nLangguth writes with the authority of a seasoned journalist and the sensitivity of a literary scholar, reconstructing Munro's remarkable journey from miserable colonial childhood to celebrated wit of London's literary salons, and ultimately to the Western Front, where he was killed by a sniper's bullet in 1916. The biography argues compellingly that Saki's genius was inseparable from his suffering — that the cruelty, the black humour, and the predatory children that populate his fiction were born directly from his own experience of powerlessness. For anyone who has ever been startled into laughter by a Saki story and then unsettled by what that laughter reveals, this biography raises the question that no reader can resist: how much of the monster is the man?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49130988011739,"sku":"2026200012664-SECONDHAND","price":20.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/fa125c2c-0224-4f0e-98df-4de328c5037f.png?v=1786593729","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200012664-secondhand-saki-a-life-of-hector-hugh-munro","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}