Based on true-life events, Kipling uncovers the dynamics between members of the Freemasonry as well as the colonisers themselves (The English Freemansons) with the colonised (the native Indians, who are explicitly and recurrently belittled).

By intertwining some brief atmospheric imagery with semantics related to heat–fire–red, the first-person narrator reports – like a good journalist– the stream of trial-and-error codes and consequences of one's acts as dutiful Englishmen of action in this (short) story that shares surprising similarities with: From Up on Poppy Hill, The Importance of Being Earnest and Animal Crossing.

Combining different verb tenses and language registers, it is a story set in a From-Up-On-Poppy-Hill newspaper-club style, where two characters from The Importance of Being Earnest are in conversation with some villagers in Animal Crossing (portrayed by one single character) asking for some advice on an ambitious adventure that may or may not go wrong.

I'm usually not a harsh critique but I just couldn't get this particular book. It was lacking in some ways and I had to skim through a few pages to just get to the end and finish it off. Maybe it's cuz my mind was preoccupied or maybe it wasn't the right time to start a book like this one. So yes, though a short story, I found it extremely boring.

I'm usually not a harsh critique but I just couldn't get this particular book. It was lacking in some ways and I had to skim through a few pages to just get to the end and finish it off. Maybe it's cuz my mind was preoccupied or maybe it wasn't the right time to start a book like this one. So yes, though a short story, I found it extremely boring.

A mixed bag but pulled together with great narration.

This is a novella, so there is only so much that can go into it. I guess that is a way of partially excusing this story for being not very interesting. This story seems to be Kipling's attempt to write in the style of oral storytelling. The story is mostly told as a flashback, so there is not much suspense as to the ending. The characters are colorful, but, consistent with the brief format, the Kipling uses just a few specific "watchwords" and "touchstones" to describe them that are immediately supposed to call to mind a "type" from which you can fill in the details. Unfortunately, what those "touchstones" symbolize is not obvious to a modern layman separated by such distance in time and culture. I understood plenty to understand the story, but I think I missed the extra layer that would have really made me admire the storytelling.

I always enjoy Kipling, in spite of his imperialism, or maybe because of it. His portraits of expats whose only real home is the colony the live in, despite their not belonging there resonate with me for some reason. They don't fit where they are, in part because they set themselves as separate as possible in order to not go native, and in part, because they're afraid of being rejected or the natives turning on them.

In The Man Who Would Be King, that's just what happens when a white gets too close to the natives. When he decides to take a wife, the natives over whom he is ruling, turn against him, realizing that he is not a god, and chase him and his companion out, killing one and nearly killing the other. Their experience seems to be a warning by Kipling against getting too close to the indigenous. Yes, the colonists have a responsibility towards the natives, to educate, domesticate and civilize the natives as much as their nature will let them, but colonists always must remember that they are 'sahib' and must stay apart. By getting too close, you make yourself as one of them, and cease to be special. If you cease to be special, they will recognize you for what you are, an intruder and a conqueror who needs to be overthrown, rather than a demi-god to be obeyed and worshipped.

DNF!

I picked this book for the 2020 PopSugar Challenge category of "an anthology" and I wish I hadn't! Given other reviews, I'm clearly missing something here, but this was horrible. As in horribly written and horribly "I'm superior to you" with the main character of the few stories that I actually started.

I'm not a fan of short stories because I almost always want more when they are over, but these weren't short enough for me.

This is a story written in 1888 that shows the Victorian and English colonialist mentality. It has the prejudice against countries/cultures considered inferior to the superior European - specially the English one - and the arrogance that goes with it.

Two men decide to go to a place in which now belongs to Afghanistan to become kings, thinking that by bringing their superior guns and intelligence they can easily trick the locals and become kings. Dravot is more ambitious than the companion Carnehan who follows along to the ride. They meet this journalist to whom they tell the story and then go to their adventure.

In the beginning they accomplish their goal but then, of course, things go very badly for them. One ends up dead and the other comes back to tell the story to the journalist and end up dying as well. .

The author's moral of the story seems to be blaming women (or lusting after them) and departure from the true religion - with Dravot wanting to become a God - for the bad things that happen and loss of their authority and everything they've conquered. There is no reflection about how wrong it is to assume your culture is superior to other, but rather that there is goodness in conquering other "inferior" cultures that end up benefiting from the good things the superior British bring.

There is also the racism of thinking that the people they've conquered are not as bad because they are not as dark as the other people the British have conquered. There is denial as well since at a certain point, Dravot talks about bathing someone in hot water several times so they would become as white as them. If the people around them were white, then no such method would be needed.

In all it's a very interesting tale and funny to see how these two idiots end up getting what they deserve in the end,

Spoiler

even though I disagree with the reasons why they got screwed.

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