Penguin Classics: The Man Who Would Be King: Selected Stories of Rudyard Kipling

‘They tell me that one never sees a dead person’s 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 Kipling’s works in Penguin Classics, this volume contains a General Preface by Jan Montefiore and an introduction discussing Kipling’s reputation and influence, the ambivalence of his writing and the fascination with ‘otherness’ expressed in his short works.