Now available in paperback, this moving historical novel examines the lost days of Rudyard Kipling's son, John who was killed in his first battle of World War I.
"As a short-story writer, Rudyard Kipling is equaled only by Chekhov -- and this unusually generous selection, intended as a companion volume to T. S. Eliot's A Choice of Kipling's Verse, will undoubtedly confirm Kipling as a great master. Kipling has never wanted for advocates. The list includes George Orwell, Jorge Luis Borges, Kingsley Amis and Angus Wilson, as well as Eliot. But Craig Raine, in his original and meticulous introduction, offers a fresh overview of the work, as well as detailed readings of particular stories." -- Back cover.
This book is for all those who love Kim, that masterpiece of Indian life in which Kipling immortalized the Great Game. Fascinated since childhood by this strange tale of an orphan boy's recruitment into the Indian secret service, Peter Hopkirk here retraces Kim's footsteps across Kipling's India to see how much of it remains. To attempt this with a fictional hero would normally be pointless. But Kim is different. For much of this Great Game classic was inspired by actual people and places, thus blurring the line between the real and the imaginary. Less a travel book than a literary detective story, this is the intriguing story of Peter Hopkirk's quest for Kim and a host of other shadowy figures.
THE STORY: The year is 1913. War with Germany is imminent. Rudyard Kipling, the British Empire's greatest apologist, is at the peak of his literary fame. This play explores the nature of a man who loses his balance when devotion to family and count
An Irish orphan becomes the disciple of a Tibetan monk while learning espionage tactics from the British secret service in India. Kipling's final and most famous novel.