In honor of the hundredth anniversary of Evelyn Waugh’s birth, four of the master’s most wickedly scathing comedies are here brought together in one volume.

Black Mischief is Waugh at his most mischievous–inventing a politically loopy African state as a means of pulverizing politics at home. In Scoop, it is journalism’s turn to be drawn and quartered. The Loved One (which became a famously hilarious film) sends up the California mortuary business. And The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is a burst of fictionalized autobiography in which Pinfold goes mad, more or less, on board an ocean liner.

Here in four short–very different–novels are the mordant wit, inspired farce, snapping dialogue, and amazing characters that are the essence of everything Waugh ever wrote.

• everyman's libraryomnibushardback