What's Inside
This collection gathers spectral encounters and desperate schemes, beginning with an editor who navigates both the mechanical hum of a newspaper office and the sudden, uninvited presence of phantom visitors. The narratives shift from the grime-caked walls of lonely dâk-bungalows to the waterless sands of the Great Indian Desert, where a man stumbles upon a town of the socially dead who survive on crows and carrion. Other stories follow two drifters riding toward a remote territory to stake a claim on a crown of their own. From the biting laughter of a Brahmin outcast to the heat-stricken office where copyboys whine for text, the volume tracks men isolated in a landscape that does not care for their sanity or their survival.
Works & figures
- Morrowbie Jukes
An Englishman trapped in a crater village of the living dead. (in “THE STRANGE RIDE OF MORROWBIE JUKES”)
- Gunga Dass
A former Brahmin who survived cholera and now eats crows. (in “THE STRANGE RIDE OF MORROWBIE JUKES”)
- Daniel Dravot
A dissolute adventurer seeking a crown in the mountains. (in “THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING”)
- The Khansamah
An aged bungalow servant who remembers long-dead English officials. (in “MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY”)
What it's really about
- Liminality
- Existing between life and death in a harsh environment.
- Imperial Hubris
- The dangerous consequences of attempting to rule foreign territories.
Why it's memorable
- A Brahmin reduced to eating gnawed breast bones in a sand pit of the dead.
- The rhythmic rattling of dry palm bones against a filthy, wind-swept bungalow.
Where to start
Start with The Man Who Would Be King for a sharp look at how two men nearly stole a country before the mountains broke them.
For your book club
- Does the colonial setting make the supernatural elements feel more or less grounded in reality?
- How does the village of the dead reflect British anxieties about Indian social structures?