The Open Window Study Guide

Arguably the most popular of Saki’s short stories, “The Open Window” first appeared in Beasts and Super Beasts, a collection of short stories published in 1914 just before Munro went to fight in World War I. “The Open Window” is appreciated most for its surprise ending, in which the reader finds that she too has been fooled by Vera’s macabre tale of death and desperation. Michael Dirda recently celebrated the story in a review in the Wall Street Journal, in which he called this piece and others penned by Saki “masterpieces.”