The Unbearable Bassington (Capuchin Classics)

The Unbearable Bassington describes the adventures of the fastidious and likeable but maladjusted Comus Bassington. Bassington is an upper-class young man with a cynical outlook, whose mother's sole aim is to arrange advantageous opportunities for him. But Bassington has a terrible habit of spoiling things through his self-centred behaviour. A biting satire on the conceits of high society and an exquisite novel of manners, The Unbearable Bassington is also an incisive piece of writing, anticipating the early works of Evelyn Waugh, whose introduction to a previous edition is included here. Here is Edwardian society impaled on Saki's inimitable skewer.