Beyond the Pale (Unabridged)

Written by Rudyard Kipling

Narrated by Robin Nixon

The story first appeared in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and was included in the many subsequent editions of that collection. It was also published in Papyrus in 1909 under the title of "Bisesa".
A beautiful young Indian woman, Bisesa, has been widowed very young, and longs for a lover. An Englishman, Trejago, who is knowledgeable about things Indian, wanders into the gully where she sits behind a barred window, and has a flirtatious exchange with her. One thing leads to another, and they secretly become passionate lovers. After an idyllic month he is attentive to an Englishwoman, with no serious intent, but Bisesa hears of it and tells him to go. He is desperate to see her, but the next time she answers his knock at the window, it is only to thrust out the stumps of her amputated hands in the moonlight. From behind her a knife stabs into Trejago's groin, and the grating is slammed shut. There has been tragedy, and he has lost her. He has paid heavily for stepping beyond the limits of his own people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bookstream Audiobooks
• Release date: Nov 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9783991176664

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865. After intermittently moving between India and England during his early life, he settled in the latter in 1889, published his novel The Light That Failed in 1891 and married Caroline (Carrie) Balestier the following year. They returned to her home in Brattleboro, Vermont, where Kipling wrote both The Jungle Book and its sequel, as well as Captains Courageous. He continued to write prolifically and was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 but his later years were darkened by the death of his son John at the Battle of Loos in 1915. He died in 1936.