Tobermory and Other Stories (Манро Гектор); Alma Books, 2018

‘Tobermory’ – the title story of this collection – is widely considered one of Saki’s finest pieces, in which a short-sighted dinner-party guest introduces a talking cat to the diners, inadvertently revealing gossip and pushing fickle characters into the limelight – in the process undermining the common perceptions of grandiose and genteel high society.

From some of his earliest successes, such as ‘Gabriel-Ernest’, ‘The Bag’ and the Clovis stories, about a young man with an impish sense of humour, to later tales such as ‘The Boar-Pig’, which is as bizarre as it is hilarious, and ‘The Toys of Peace’, which he was never able to see in print, this selection contains a wealth of well-known tales with vastly different themes – from reincarnation to psychological warfare – and bearing every trademark token of wit with which Saki has enthralled generations of eager readers.

Contains: ‘The Blood-Feud of Toad-Water’, ‘Gabriel-Ernest’, ‘The Bag’, ‘The Mouse’, ‘Esme’, ‘Tobermory’, ‘Mrs Packletide’s Tiger’, ‘Hermann the Irascible’, ‘The Unrest-Cure’, ‘The Jesting of Arlington Stringham’, ‘Sredni Vashtar’, ‘The Chaplet’, ‘Filboid Studge’, ‘The Music on the Hill’, ‘The Hounds of Fate’, ‘The She-Wolf’, ‘Laura’, ‘The Boar-Pig’, ‘The Open Window’, ‘The Schartz-Metterklume Method’, ‘The Storyteller’, ‘The Lumber Room’, ‘The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat’, ‘The Toys of Peace’, ‘Tea’, ‘A Bread-and-Butter Miss’, ‘Bertie’s Christmas Eve’, ‘Forewarned’, ‘The Interlopers’ and ‘The Bull’