Hector Hugh Munro, better known by the pen name Saki, and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, he himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward and P. G. Wodehouse. Munro was born in Akyab, Burma in 1870. In 1872 while she was on a trip to England, his mother Mary was charged by a cow. She suffered a miscarriage, never recovered, and died in 1872 when Munro was only two years old. After her death, the Munro children were sent from Burma back to England where they lived with their grandmother and aunts in a strict puritanical household. In Sredni Vashtar, a sickly child named Conradin is raised by his aunt and guardian, Mrs De Ropp, who "would never... have confessed to herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him 'for his good' was a duty which she did not find particularly irksome". Conradin rebels against his aunt and her choking authority. He invents a religion in which his pole-cat ferret is imagined as a vengeful deity, and Conradin prays that "Sredni Vashtar" will deliver retribution upon De Ropp. When De Ropp attempts to dispose of the animal, it attacks and kills her… You can listen online to free English audiobook “Sredni Vashtar” by Saki on our website.
