The Man Who Would Be King

Name: The Man Who Would Be King
Price: 16.95 AUD
Availability: OutOfStock
ISBN: 9798900750026

Heathen Short

Rudyard Kipling

$16.95

Paperback

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English

Heathen Shorts
24 December 2025

Freemasonry & secret societies

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English journalist, poet, and author. In 1888, he published ""The Man Who Would Be King,"" a sharp parable of imperial ambition and spiritual delusion. The story follows two British adventurers in colonial India who crown themselves kings of Kafiristan, a remote region of Afghanistan. Kipling - himself a child of Empire - renders their ascent from beggars to sovereigns with journalistic precision and mythic undertones as they wield Freemasonic symbols and military cunning to captivate a native people. Their reign collapses, however, when one breaks an oath and takes a native bride, shattering their illusion of divinity. What begins as a swaggering colonial fantasy curdles into tragedy, exposing the moral rot beneath self-made godhood, the fatal cost of hubris, and the bitter echo of blasphemy.

By: Rudyard Kipling
Imprint: Heathen Shorts
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 4mm
Weight: 82g
ISBN: 9798900750026
Pages: 60
Publication Date: 24 December 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Reviews for The Man Who Would Be King (Heathen Short)

""The most audacious thing in fiction."" -J.M. Barrie ""One of Rudyard Kipling's best stories is 'The Man Who Would Be King.'"" -Richmond Times-Dispatch ""Full of wild and brilliant writing."" -The Press ""The way sets forth in 'The Man Who Would Be King' has the taste of the real thing . . . it is all more real than imagination could contrive."" -Boston Evening Transcript ""One of his most powerful stories."" -The Evening Chronicle ""There is no story quite equal to 'The Man Who Would Be King' for grasp and sweep of imagination."" -Pall Mall Gazette ""Among the very best ever written by Mr. Kipling . . . marked with all his graphic force and dramatic vigor."" -The Independent ""The imaginative power of his incomparable story 'The Man Who Would Be King' is a triumph of artistic deception."" -The Saturday Review ""Kipling is the greatest genius we have had for 50 years in imagination, genius, and grip. I think his story, 'The Man Who Would Be King, ' the finest story in the English language."" -Walter Besant ""Brilliant if exceedingly gruesome . . . one of the strongest bits of work Kipling has ever done."" -The New Zealand Times ""Nothing wilder or more weird was ever written than 'The Man Who Would Be King' . . . in which Kipling's imagination reaches its highest mark."" -San Francisco Chronicle