Pastoralia
Before Tenth of December made him famous, Pastoralia was the collection where Saunders locked in his voice: corporate dystopia played for laughs that curdle into dread. The title novella, about two theme-park employees pretending to be cavemen, is the funniest story about workplace despair ever written. Every sentence sounds like it was focus-grouped by a committee that hates you.
Six stories, one voice. The debased corporate dialect that makes the title novella sing gets reapplied to every premise until you can predict the cadence of the next humiliation. Saunders loves his losers but keeps them losers; the pity starts to feel administered from above. Funniest in small doses, which a collection by definition is not.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
