Saki Treatment of restlessness

Saki, by his own name Hector Hugh Munro, is one of the classics of satirical literature and a master of the short story. He can be ranked alongside the English-language humourists of such renowned names as his contemporaries O. Henry, Jerome Klapka, Stephen Leacock or Dorothy Parker. In Saki's biography we read that he spent his early childhood in India, travelled extensively in Europe with his father as a young man, and after a serious illness settled in London where he began to build a career as a journalist. He began publishing a series of Alice in Westminster features in the Westminster Gazette, in which he satirically commented on the British government's handling of the Boer War in the form of a parodic sequel to Carroll's famous Alice in Wonderland. In the meantime, he also started publishing short stories. Already Saki's first set, Reginald (1904), introduces his characteristic hero, a bright but socially irresponsible young man who likes to have fun at the expense of his sedentary, respectable surroundings. The collection of short stories with the Czech title Léčba neklidem, from which the selection on this audiobook is based, was first published in the 1970s.