Plain Tales from the Hills.

In the hill stations and cantonments of British India, love affairs bloom and wither in a season, careers rise and fall on a rumour, and a young journalist watches it all with an eye that misses nothing.

What it's about

Plain Tales from the Hills is Rudyard Kipling's first major collection, gathering short, sharp stories drawn from his years as a young reporter in India. Peopled by soldiers, colonial administrators, memsahibs and the occasional glimpsed Indian life, the tales range from comedy to tragedy, sketching the manners, intrigues and small heartbreaks of Anglo-Indian society with remarkable economy and confidence.

Themes

The stories examine the codes and hypocrisies of colonial society, the loneliness and boredom that breed scandal, and the gulfs of class, rank and race that structure this world. Irony is Kipling's chief instrument, and beneath the wit runs a persistent awareness of exile, disillusion and the human cost of empire.

Why it still matters

These early tales announced one of the most influential storytellers in English and helped define the modern short story. Read now with critical eyes, they remain an invaluable, complicated record of the British Raj, revealing as much in their assumptions as in their artistry, and showing a great writer discovering his powers.

Who it's for

For readers of classic short fiction and admirers of Kipling's craft, for anyone interested in the literature of empire and its contradictions, and for those who value stories that say a great deal in very few pages.