In these stories, first published over a hundred years ago, Kipling sets the stage for encounters between the East and the West—between India and Anglo-India. The tales are remarkable not just for the range of Indian places and situations they describe or their wealth of historical detail but also for their sensitive and by and large fair representations of both British and Indian characters, Kipling takes on the thorny issues of empire, race, miscegenation and the practice of ‘going native’, and uses them as literary tropes to examine human culture, religion and society. Whether it is the account of Lispeth who first embraces Christianity at ‘the mature age of five weeks’ and then rejects it and the hypocrisy of missionaries when her heart is broken, or that of little Tods who is more at home in the bazaars than in a colonial drawing room and knows India as a native, or that of Bisesa and Trejago whose affair in the cover of darkness leads to explosive and tragic consequences for both, here are tales that have an uncanny ability to get to the heart of the human situation and represent behaviour, strengths and weaknesses on both sides of the ‘divide’ between the East and the West. Immediate and vivid descriptions, searing wit and above all Kipling’s remarkable talent for spinning a yarn make this anthology a truly rewarding read. An eclectic collection of old favourites and lesser known and rarely anthologized pieces—here is Kipling’s India at its finest.
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