Saki

Born Hector Hugh Munro in British Burma in 1870, Saki spent much of his childhood in England after his mother died and his father remained overseas in government service. That difficult early life, especially time spent with strict relatives, is often seen in the watchful children, brittle adults, and quietly cruel family dynamics that appear in his fiction.

He worked as a journalist and foreign correspondent before building his reputation as a writer of short stories, political sketches, and novels. His best-known work includes The Open Window, Sredni Vashtar, and The Chronicles of Clovis, all marked by wit, surprise, and a talent for exposing vanity and social manners with just a few lines.

Saki died in 1916 while serving in World War I. Though his life was cut short, his stories have lasted because they are funny in a very precise way: elegant on the surface, but always ready to let something wild slip through.