Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories

The title story, "Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime", is one of Wilde's most famous and quintessentially Wildean tales. It begins when Lord Arthur Savile, a respectable aristocrat, has his palm read by a chiromantist who predicts that he will commit a murder. Far from being disturbed, Lord Arthur takes this prediction seriously and decides to fulfill his destiny. What follows is a darkly comedic series of events in which he attempts to commit the murder he believes he must carry out to avoid bad luck. The story is a brilliant exploration of fate, free will, and the absurdity of the high-society obsession with appearances.