title: Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories by: Wilde, Oscar published: read: 2024-04-11 preview

You have to give it to Wilde. He can come up with a plot, and then tell it well. The title story, and the first story in the version I read, is about Lord Arthur Savile whose palm gets read by a psychic. Result: he will kill a distant relative before he can marry.

He finds it ridiculous, of course, but in the course of the story then decides to take fate in his own hands, and starts attempting to murder distant relatives here and there. It appears to be harder than he thinks… until he finds a solution.

All of that set in Wilde’s Victorian era, and the ridicule of the two opposites makes not only entertaining literature, but also for strong societal criticism. Irony and sarcasm from the first to the last word. One must love it.