The Unbearable Bassington (Capuchin Classics)

 

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-centered behavior. An incisive piece of writing, this novel anticipates the early works of Evelyn Waugh, whose introduction to a previous edition is included here. Here Edwardian society is impaled on Saki's inimitable skewer.