(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) <br>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. <br>"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. <br>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.