The Man Who Would Be King

By Rudyard Kipling

Swashbuckling British adventurers find triumph and tragedy in nineteenth-century Afghanistan in this novella J. M. Barrie called “the most audacious thing in fiction.”
 
While on tour in India, a British journalist encounters Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan, two foolhardy drifters with a plan. Claiming they’ve exhausted all the schemes and odd jobs they could find in India, the two are in search of an even greater adventure. They tell the journalist they’re venturing to nearby Kafiristan—modern-day Afghanistan—to depose a weak ruler and establish themselves as kings. With a cache of the best rifles and knowledge of Masonic rituals that will baffle the native tribesmen, Daniel and Peachey don’t see how they can fail. But they may have underestimated the locals . . .
 
Inspired by tales of real-life explorers, Rudyard Kipling wrote The Man Who Would Be King when he was only twenty-two years old. Featuring vivid prose, exotic settings, and unforgettable characters, this dissection of the heroic pretensions of imperialism and colonialism is a swashbuckling tale for the ages, and served as inspiration for the 1975 John Huston film starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Oct 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504041126

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English author and poet who began writing in India and shortly found his work celebrated in England. An extravagantly popular, but critically polarizing, figure even in his own lifetime, the author wrote several books for adults and children that have become classics, Kim, The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, Captains Courageous and others. Although taken to task by some critics for his frequently imperialistic stance, the author’s best work rises above his era’s politics. Kipling refused offers of both knighthood and the position of Poet Laureate, but was the first English author to receive the Nobel prize.

Book preview

Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.

THE LAW, AS QUOTED, LAYS down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came near to kinship with what might have been a veritable King and was promised the reversion of a Kingdom—army, law-courts, revenue and policy all complete. But, to-day, I greatly fear that my King is dead, and if I want a crown I must go and hunt it for myself.

The beginning of everything was in a railway train upon the road to Mhow from Ajmir. There had been a deficit in the Budget, which necessitated travelling, not Second-class, which is only half as dear as First-class, but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty; or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not patronize refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside water. That is why in the hot weather Intermediates are taken out of the carriages dead, and in all weathers are most properly looked down upon.

My particular Intermediate happened to be empty till I reached Nasirabad, when a huge gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered, and, following the custom of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He was a wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but with an educated taste for whiskey. He told tales of things he had seen and done, of out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into which he had penetrated, and of adventures in which he risked his life for a few days’ food. If India was filled with men like you and me, not knowing more than the crows where they’d get their next day’s rations, it isn’t seventy millions of revenue the land would be paying—it’s seven hundred million, said he; and as I looked at his mouth and chin I was disposed to agree with him. We talked politics—the politics of Loaferdom that sees things from the underside where the lath and plaster is not smoothed off—and we talked postal arrangements because my friend wanted to send a telegram back from the next station to Ajmir, which is the turning-off place from the Bombay to the Mhow line as you travel westward. My friend had no money beyond eight annas which he wanted for dinner, and I had no money at all, owing to the hitch in the Budget before mentioned. Further, I was going into a wilderness where, though I should resume touch with the Treasury, there were no telegraph offices. I was, therefore, unable to help him in any way.

We might threaten a Station-master, and make him send a wire on tick, said my friend, but that’d mean inquiries for you and for me, and I’ve got my hands full these days. Did you say you are travelling back along this line within any days?

Within ten, I said.

Can’t you make it eight? said he. Mine is rather urgent business.

I can send your telegram within ten days if that will serve you, I said.

I couldn’t trust the wire to fetch him now I think of it. It’s this way. He leaves Delhi on the 23d for Bombay. That means he’ll be running through Ajmir about the night of the 23d.

But I’m going into the Indian Desert, I explained.

"Well and good, said he. You’ll be changing at Marwar Junction to get into Jodhpore territory—you must do that—and he’ll be coming through Marwar Junction in the early morning of the 24th by the Bombay Mail. Can you be at Marwar Junction on that time? ’Twon’t be inconveniencing you because I know that there’s precious few pickings to be got out of these Central India States—even though you pretend to be correspondent of the Backwoodsman."

Have you ever tried that trick? I asked.

"Again and again, but the Residents find you out, and then

Reviews for The Man Who Would Be King

[jimelkins · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

What happens when you read something in which the form, public, content, style, content, and voice are entirely familiar, to the point where they do not register as objects of thought, but only as tokens of the familiar? That's my experience reading "The Man Who Would Be King." Kipling is an author who does not need to be read to be experienced, because every mannerism, every narrative move, each racist and colonialist cliché, is already lodged in our culture. I'd seen the movie, which is a John Huston epic, and I had thought the book must be long: but on my e-reader it's only 80 pages, and Kipling only needs one-third of that to tell his story. The speed of his narrative might be an indication that even for him, the subjects and interests of the story were so familiar they only needed to be telegraphed.Reading is an empty experience: how can any of the reality effects work? How can any of the bids for drama and affect produce the effects they were apparently intended to have? Nearly everything runs automatically. I am not impatient to know what happens; I am impatient at my own reading speed. Nothing disturbs my racing eye. My thoughts are placid, distracted. Every once in a while, a character says something colorful, and I make a mental note to remember it, but it's so trivial, so uninteresting, that I immediately forget it: I had only noticed it because everything around it was so blank, so free of interest. Kipling has died a cultural death: the work is empty, and there isn't even any reason left to mourn for it.But then again, this must be the experience of millions of readers who consume murder mysteries, romances, and any other formula fiction. If I did feel anything reading "The Man Who Would be King," I would have to question how much I had thought about the books I have read, and the movies I've seen, depicting the British colonial experience. I'd have to wonder whether I had ever considered what generates the interest in epic adventures and romantic journeys. I would have to do some serious reconsidering of my own capacity to reflect on what I read. There can't be a thrill here, if everything that presents the thrill is such a frail cliché. If you like Kipling in the twenty-first century, you have to be an unreflective reader.

[mrtall_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This story of two English adventurers determined to raise themselves into rulers in trackless Afghanistan is vintage Kipling. It's deadly serious, yet playful and ironic; detailed, yet broad in scope; fanciful, yet strangely plausible. His characters leap off the page, demonstrated vividly in here. The Man Who Would Be King is freely available at Project Guttenberg, and is an excellent point of entry for Kipling's work.

[domingosantos_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A short story that makes for a quick and entertaining read. I was a bit thrown by some of the spellings in the dialogue, but, thanks to phonics, was able to figure out most of the strange, if not misspelled, words. The surprise was the references to the Order of Masons, and the pre-existence of the Masonic symbol.

[dulac3_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Is it wrong for me to say that I thought the movie was better? Generally I don't find this to be the case, but perhaps this was one place where the exception proved the rule. Still it's a great tale that I do remember enjoying...maybe if I had read it before seeing the movie I wouldn't have felt this way. It just seemed to me that the movie was actually a bit more fleshed out in a few areas of plot and character than the story was.

[pondlife_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'd seen the film version years ago, so I already knew the story when I read the book. I was surprised to find that it was a short story rather than a novel - I'd assumed that the film had condensed the book, but soon realised that it had just about the same content.Reading the book made me realise how good the casting of Michael Caine and Sean Connery in the film was. I found myself reading Peachy's lines in Michael Caine's voice, and Daniel's in Connery's voice.All in all, this was a good enjoyable short story. I found the observations on collonialism a bit too obvious, but still enjoyed it as a humerous adventure yarn.

[fromkin_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A brief, punchy story that John Huston made into a wonderful film with Sean Connery and Michael Caine. Huston and Gladys Hill kept to the outline of Kipling's story (the story is actually an outline itself), and fleshed out the characters unforgettably. This is really Peachy Carnahan's story, and his telling of his and Daniel Dravot's adventures in Kafiristan (northeast Afghanistan)is heartbreaking, despite the con artists' hubris and stupidity. I suppose this is a microcosm of the British experience in Afghanistan - as well as the Russians'. Whether colonialism writ large, or colonialism writ small, it all seemed doomed from the start.

[elpaca · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Should I have been looking for some parallel to the ongoing situation in the -stan's? Or just enjoy the story?

[rajivc_18 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a short book. I saw the movie years ago, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. I thought that the movie was brilliant.This book, short that it is, packs in a punch. It is rich in imagery, it is rich in style. Not one word is wasted. You are left thinking deeply about the imaginary events that would have taken place in the mountains of Afghanistan.It is a story of megalomania, it is a story of superstition. It is a painting cast in words.It's a story for a lost time, yet one that is alive today.

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good adventure story as well as a nice character study. Power corrupts ...