The Man Who Would Be King

They tell me that one never sees a dead persons face in a dream. Is that true? Rudyard Kipling is one of the most magical storytellers in the English language. This new selection brings together the best of his short writings, following the development of his work over fifty years. They take us from the harsh, cruel, vividly realized world of the Indian stories that made his name, through the experimental modernism of his middle period to the highly-wrought subtleties of his later pieces. Including the tale of insanity and empire, The Man Who Would Be King, the high-spirited The Village that Voted the Earth Was Flat, the fable of childhood cruelty and revenge Baa Baa, Black Sheep, the menacing psychological study Mary Postgate and the ambiguous portrayal of grief and mourning in The Gardener, here are stories of criminals, ghosts, femmes fatales, madness and murder. Part of a series of new editions of Kiplings works in Penguin Classics, this volume contains a General Preface by Jan Montefiore and an introduction discussing Kiplings reputation and influence, the ambivalence of his writing and the fascination with otherness expressed in his short works. Edited with an introduction by JAN MONTEFIORESeries Editor JAN MONTEFIORE