The Man Who Would be King and Other Stories (World's Classics S.) - Softcover

Kipling, Rudyard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192816748 ISBN 13: 9780192816740

Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks, 1987

Synopsis

Arranged in the order of their original publication and written during Kipling's time as a journalist in India, these seventeen short stories explore the themes of isolation and abandonment and the effects of the Indian caste system on society. Along with the title piece, the volume includes "Gemini," "A Wayside Comedy," "The Hill of Illusion," "Only a Subaltern," "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep," "Black Jack," and others.

About this title

Review

"Small wonders"
--"Time Out London"
"I wanted them all, even those I'd already read."
--Ron Rosenbaum, "The New York Observer"

Sean Barrett's reading goes beyond narration into performance in The Man Who Would Be King, a novella in Conradian vein. He begins gently enough as the Indian civil servant who recounts his first meeting with Peachey Carnehan and Daniel Dravot, 'gentlemen at large', who are planning to carve out a kingdom for themselves in a remote corner of Afghanistan. Barrett then creates the colourful personalities of the conniving Peachey and the bombastic, red-bearded Daniel before they disappear up country. Four years later Peachey reappears, a 'rag-wrapped, whining cripple', and tells the story of their meteoric rise and even faster fall. Kipling's storytelling and Barrett's reading is so immediate that you feel he's actually in the fanatically idolatrous mountain kingdom, living the perils of the protagonists. Other macabre stories in the collection include The Phantom Rickshaw, The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes and The Mark of the Beast. --- Christina Hardyment, The Times

"I wanted them all, even those I'd already read."
Ron Rosenbaum, "The New York Observer"
"Small wonders."
"Time Out London"
"""[F]irst-rate astutely selected and attractively packaged indisputably great works."
Adam Begley, "The New York Observer"
"I ve always been haunted by Bartleby, the proto-slacker. But it s the handsomely minimalist cover of the Melville House edition that gets me here, one of many in the small publisher s fine 'Art of the Novella' series."
"The New Yorker"
"The Art of the Novella series is sort of an anti-Kindle. What these singular, distinctive titles celebrate is book-ness. They're slim enough to be portable but showy enough to be conspicuously consumed tiny little objects that demand to be loved for the commodities they are."
KQED (NPR San Francisco)
"Some like it short, and if you're one of them, Melville House, an independent publisher based in Brooklyn, has a line of books for you... elegant-looking paperback editions ...a good read in a small package."
" ---The Wall Street Journal

About the Author

Nobel prize-winning writer Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, but returned with his parents to England at the age of five. Influenced by experiences in both India and England, Kipling s stories celebrate British imperialism and the experience of the British soldier in India. Amongst Kipling s best-known works are The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, and the poems Mandalay and Gunga Din. Kipling was the first English-language writer to receive the Nobel prize for literature (1907) and was amongst the youngest to receive the award. Kipling died in 1936 and is interred in Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0192816748
• ISBN 13: 9780192816740
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336