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A newspaper editor in India tells how he met two loafers, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan, former soldiers who have signed a contract forbidding drink and…
A newspaper editor in India tells how he met two loafers, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan, former soldiers who have signed a contract forbidding drink and women until their plan is complete: to travel into the mountains of Kafiristan, beyond Afghanistan, with twenty rifles, and make themselves kings. Two years later a broken, crippled man stumbles into the editor's office at night to tell him what happened.
Context and significance
Rudyard Kipling wrote the story in 1888, when he was twenty-two and working as a journalist in India, and it remains one of the great tales of ambition and empire. John Huston's 1975 film with Sean Connery and Michael Caine brought it new readers. Read Kim next, and see Kipling's life.
About the author
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was born in Bombay, sent to England at five to an unhappy foster home, and returned to India at sixteen to work as a journalist in Lahore. His stories of Anglo-Indian life made him famous in London in his twenties.
The Jungle Book, written in Vermont, Kim and Just So Stories became classics, and in 1907 he became the first English-language writer to win the Nobel Prize. His poem 'If—' is still widely quoted, though his support for empire makes him a controversial figure today. His only son was killed in the First World War.