The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories

“The Man Who Would be King and Other Stories” is a classic collection of some of the most loved short stories of Rudyard Kipling, one of the most important and accomplished English authors of the twentieth century. The youngest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature at age 42 in 1907, Kipling, who was born in India in 1865, captured in his writing the British Empire in all of its glory and contradiction in unparalleled detail and nuance. Contained here in this volume are some of his most enduring and fascinating short stories, such as the titular “The Man Who Would be King”, a story of two young British adventurers who believe they can talk and intimidate their way into being kings of a small country near Afghanistan. It is a fascinating and brutal tale of greed, imperialism, arrogance, and desperation. Also included is the haunting ghost story “The Phantom ’Rickshaw”, where a young man is driven mad by the ghost of the young lady he once spurned, and the dark and heartbreaking “Baa Baa, Black Sheep”, a story of an unwanted young ward who is driven to desperate acts by his cruel and heartless aunt. Together this collection includes seventeen of Kipling’s best short stories. This edition includes a biographical afterword.