Plain Tales from the Hills

The collection that launched Kipling’s fame gathers his early short stories of British India—tales of soldiers, civil servants, lovers, and the collision of English and Indian life, told with sharp economy, irony, and an insider’s eye. From comedy to tragedy to the supernatural, these compact, brilliant stories reveal the young author’s astonishing gift for capturing a whole world in a few pages. Vivid, worldly, and often unsentimental, Plain Tales from the Hills established Kipling as the great chronicler of the British Raj. A dazzling debut of the short-story form, it offers an unforgettable panorama of colonial India in miniature.