
The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $20.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Sean Barrett
-
By:
-
Rudyard Kipling
About this listen
In a remote part of 19th-century Afghanistan, two British adventurers pursue their ambition to rule an empire. Using betrayal, threats, and guns, they win the respect of a primitive tribe and become worshipped as gods until one day they draw blood, and the game is up. "The Man Who Would Be King" is an action-packed tale about the pitfalls of colonialism and the temptations and evils of power. This volume also includes the stories "The Phantom Rickshaw", "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes", "The Mark of the Beast" and many more.
Download the accompanying reference guide.Public Domain (P)2015 Naxos AudioBooksListeners also enjoyed...
-
Moby Dick
- By: Herman Melville
- Narrated by: William Hootkins
- Length: 24 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Call me Ishmael." Thus starts the greatest American novel. Melville said himself that he wanted to write "a mighty book about a mighty theme" and so he did. It is a story of one man's obsessive revenge-journey against the white whale, Moby-Dick, who injured him in an earlier meeting. Woven into the story of the last journey of The Pequod is a mesh of philosophy, rumination, religion, history, and a mass of information about whaling through the ages.
-
-
Excellent, EXCELLENT reading!
- By Jessica on 02-18-09
By: Herman Melville
-
The Man Who Would Be King [Classic Tales Edition]
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 1 hr and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Through the sands of the scalding deserts of India, two loafing vagabonds follow a half-scribbled map, heading for a land they hope to conquer.
-
-
wasn't the best
- By Clark Poulsen on 01-21-19
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
Stalky and Co.
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Gideon Emery
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stalky & Co. is a book published in 1899 (following serialization in the Windsor Magazine) by Rudyard Kipling, about adolescent boys at a British boarding school. It is a collection of linked short stories in format, with some information about the charismatic Stalky character in later life. The character Beetle, one of the main trio, is partly based on Kipling himself. Stalky is based on Lionel Dunsterville, M'Turk is based on George Charles Beresford, and Mr. King is based on William Carr Crofts.
-
-
First proper reading of Kipling's best book
- By PC on 03-21-19
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
The Great Poets: Rudyard Kipling
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Robert Glenister, Michael Maloney
- Length: 1 hr and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This anthology of Kipling's most famous poems - including "If", "Mandalay", "Gunga Din" - is taken from Naxos AudioBooks' Great Poets series. Though sometimes still regarded as a product of the colonial era, Kipling touches a very popular nerve in Britain's literary tradition and is regarded more generously now as a master of popular verse. It is often forgotten that he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907.
-
-
Clearly read , even the young will like.
- By Mary on 11-10-12
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
The Phantom Rickshaw
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: David Ian Davies
- Length: 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rudyard Kipling’s story set in 1880’s India recounts the story of Dr. Heatherlegh’s patient, Jack Pansay, after a failed romance and slow decline of the woman as she slowly and pitiably fades in sadness to her death while he falls deeply in love with another woman. Yet in the time following this, Pansay is increasingly haunted by Agnes Keith-Wessington as she begins appearing -- again and again -- in a ghostly rickshaw that only he can see.
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
Kim
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kipling's masterpiece Kim is his final and most famous work and one of the first and greatest espionage stories ever written. It explores the life of Kimball O'Hara, an Irish orphan who spends his childhood as a vagrant in Lahore. When he befriends an aged Tibetan lama his life is transformed as he is requested to accompany him on a mysterious quest to find the legendary River of the Arrow and achieve Enlightenment.
-
-
Astonishing
- By Ron L. Caldwell on 05-08-09
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
Moby Dick
- By: Herman Melville
- Narrated by: William Hootkins
- Length: 24 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Call me Ishmael." Thus starts the greatest American novel. Melville said himself that he wanted to write "a mighty book about a mighty theme" and so he did. It is a story of one man's obsessive revenge-journey against the white whale, Moby-Dick, who injured him in an earlier meeting. Woven into the story of the last journey of The Pequod is a mesh of philosophy, rumination, religion, history, and a mass of information about whaling through the ages.
-
-
Excellent, EXCELLENT reading!
- By Jessica on 02-18-09
By: Herman Melville
-
The Man Who Would Be King [Classic Tales Edition]
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 1 hr and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Through the sands of the scalding deserts of India, two loafing vagabonds follow a half-scribbled map, heading for a land they hope to conquer.
-
-
wasn't the best
- By Clark Poulsen on 01-21-19
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
Stalky and Co.
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Gideon Emery
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stalky & Co. is a book published in 1899 (following serialization in the Windsor Magazine) by Rudyard Kipling, about adolescent boys at a British boarding school. It is a collection of linked short stories in format, with some information about the charismatic Stalky character in later life. The character Beetle, one of the main trio, is partly based on Kipling himself. Stalky is based on Lionel Dunsterville, M'Turk is based on George Charles Beresford, and Mr. King is based on William Carr Crofts.
-
-
First proper reading of Kipling's best book
- By PC on 03-21-19
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
The Great Poets: Rudyard Kipling
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Robert Glenister, Michael Maloney
- Length: 1 hr and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This anthology of Kipling's most famous poems - including "If", "Mandalay", "Gunga Din" - is taken from Naxos AudioBooks' Great Poets series. Though sometimes still regarded as a product of the colonial era, Kipling touches a very popular nerve in Britain's literary tradition and is regarded more generously now as a master of popular verse. It is often forgotten that he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907.
-
-
Clearly read , even the young will like.
- By Mary on 11-10-12
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
The Phantom Rickshaw
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: David Ian Davies
- Length: 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rudyard Kipling’s story set in 1880’s India recounts the story of Dr. Heatherlegh’s patient, Jack Pansay, after a failed romance and slow decline of the woman as she slowly and pitiably fades in sadness to her death while he falls deeply in love with another woman. Yet in the time following this, Pansay is increasingly haunted by Agnes Keith-Wessington as she begins appearing -- again and again -- in a ghostly rickshaw that only he can see.
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
Kim
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kipling's masterpiece Kim is his final and most famous work and one of the first and greatest espionage stories ever written. It explores the life of Kimball O'Hara, an Irish orphan who spends his childhood as a vagrant in Lahore. When he befriends an aged Tibetan lama his life is transformed as he is requested to accompany him on a mysterious quest to find the legendary River of the Arrow and achieve Enlightenment.
-
-
Astonishing
- By Ron L. Caldwell on 05-08-09
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
Plain Tales from the Hills
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Martin Jarvis
- Length: 4 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An intimate, evocative, often funny, and always vital portrait of India at the peak of the British Raj. Written at the age of 22, they immediately show Kipling's natural and prodigious talent. Timeless, they can be listened to forever.
-
-
Gentle irony
- By Simon Bowler on 01-25-06
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
African Kaiser
- General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and the Great War in Africa, 1914-1918
- By: Robert Gaudi
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 18 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the continent of Africa was a hotbed of international trade, colonialism, and political gamesmanship. So when World War I broke out, the European powers were forced to contend with each other not just in the bloody trenches - but in the treacherous jungle. And it was in that unforgiving land that General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck would make history.
-
-
Well Written, Well Read, Well Done!
- By Matthew on 02-25-17
By: Robert Gaudi
-
Gulliver's Travels
- By: Jonathan Swift
- Narrated by: Jasper Britton
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lemuel Gulliver, a slightly staid ship’s doctor, relates the tales of his astonishing travels. He encounters the tiny, warring Lilliputians; the giant, sceptical Brobdingnagians; the ludicrously intellectual Laputans; and the idealistic - if rather stolid - Houyhnhnms and their bestial servants, the Yahoos. An immediate best seller when it was first published in 1726, Gulliver’s Travels has remained a favourite ever since. It was an attack on the politics and society of Swift’s day, but it is also a polemical, inventive, surreal, vitriolic, and wonderfully imaginative masterpiece.
-
-
18th century satirical science fiction for adults
- By Mike on 07-30-12
By: Jonathan Swift
-
Bleak House
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett, Teresa Gallagher
- Length: 35 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A complex plot of love and inheritance is set against the English legal system of the mid-19th century. As the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce drags on, it becomes an obsession to everyone involved. And the issue on an inheritance ultimately becomes a question of murder.
-
-
WONDERFUL NARRATIONS!
- By KT on 08-25-11
By: Charles Dickens
-
The Mark of the Beast
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: B.J. Harrison
- Length: 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When a carousing Englishman disgraces the consecrated effigy of Hanuman, a leprous "Silver Man" marks him with a hideous curse. The ensuing night brings new terrors to the house of the doomed man.
-
-
Must listen again
- By uffdasuzanne on 10-06-17
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
River of Darkness
- Francisco Orellana's Legendary Voyage of Death and Discovery Down the Amazon
- By: Buddy Levy
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1541, the brutal conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro and his well-born lieutenant Francisco Orellana set off from Quito in search of La Canela, South America's rumored Land of Cinnamon, and the fabled El Dorado, "the golden man". Driving an enormous retinue of mercenaries, enslaved natives, horses, hunting dogs, and other animals across the Andes, they watched their proud expedition begin to disintegrate even before they descended into the nightmarish jungle, following the course of a powerful river.
-
-
Amazing!
- By Sammi on 02-17-18
By: Buddy Levy
-
The Count of Monte Cristo
- By: Alexandre Dumas
- Narrated by: Andrew Timothy
- Length: 50 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Count of Monte Cristo is an adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas.
Published in 1844, it is often considered one of the great thrillers of all time and, along with The Three Musketeers, Dumas' most popular work.
Falsely accused of treason, the young sailor Edmund Dantes is arrested on his wedding day and imprisoned in the island fortress of the Chateau d'If. After staging a dramatic escape, he sets out to discover the treasure of Monte Cristo and catch up with his enemies.
-
-
Incredible value
- By Barnabasdaughter on 12-17-09
By: Alexandre Dumas
-
Undaunted Courage
- By: Stephen E. Ambrose
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 21 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a voyage up the Missouri River, across the forbidding Rockies, and - by way of the Snake and the Columbia rivers - down to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and his partner, Captain William Clark, endured incredible hardships and witnessed astounding sights. With great perseverance, they worked their way into an unexplored West. When they returned two years later, they had long since been given up for dead.
-
-
Narration kills a great book
- By Kindle Customer on 02-10-08
-
A Moveable Feast
- By: Ernest Hemingway
- Narrated by: James Naughton
- Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. It is his classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, filled with irreverent portraits of other expatriate luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein; tender memories of his first wife, Hadley; and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft.
-
-
Hemingway without being TOO Hemingway
- By Cathy on 09-20-06
By: Ernest Hemingway
-
The Silmarillion
- By: J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien
- Narrated by: Andy Serkis
- Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The tales of The Silmarillion are set in an age when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle-earth, and the High Elves made war upon him for the recovery of the Silmarils, the jewels containing the pure light of Valinor. Included on the recording are several shorter works. The Ainulindalë is a myth of the Creation and in the Valaquenta the nature and powers of each of the gods is described. The Akallabêth recounts the downfall of the great island kingdom of Númenor at the end of the Second Age, and Of the Rings of Power tells of the great events at the end of the Third Age.
-
-
TIPS when reading this book:
- By Anonymous User on 06-29-23
By: J. R. R. Tolkien, and others
-
The Postman Always Rings Twice
- By: James M. Cain
- Narrated by: Stanley Tucci
- Length: 2 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An amoral young tramp. A beautiful, sullen woman with an inconvenient husband. A problem that has only one, grisly solution; a solution that only creates other problems that no one can ever solve.
-
-
Tucci's performance of "Postman" is exquisite!
- By Christopher on 06-25-12
By: James M. Cain
-
The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories
- By: Ernest Hemingway
- Narrated by: Stacy Keach
- Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The ideal introduction to the genius of Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories contains ten of Hemingway's most acclaimed and popular works of short fiction. Selected from Winner Take Nothing, Men Without Women, and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, this collection includes "The Killers," the first of Hemingway's mature stories to be accepted by an American periodical.
-
-
Extraordinary reading.
- By Septimus MacGhilleglas on 05-18-11
By: Ernest Hemingway
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Man Who Would Be King
- Unabridged
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 1 hr and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Man Who Would Be King is an enormously popular story by the legendary British writer, poet, and journalist Rudyard Kipling. In the tale, the narrator—a British newspaperman in India modeled after Kipling himself—meets two ex-military rogues named Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnehan, who have grand ambitions. They plan to load up on weapons, travel to the remote Afghan kingdom of Kafiristan and—through cunning and military force—become monarchs.
-
-
Perfect match of writer & narrator
- By Craig B. on 07-02-23
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
Captains Courageous
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Captains Courageous is Rudyard Kipling’s classic fable of a boy’s initiation into the fellowship of men, played out on the high seas of the late 1800s. When he falls overboard from a luxury liner, Harvey Cheyne, the spoiled son of an American millionaire, is rescued by a small New England fishing schooner. To earn his keep, Harvey must prove his worth in the only way the skipper and his hardy crew will accept: through the grueling mastery of a fisherman’s skills.
-
-
A MINOR sea story and a MINOR Kipling
- By Darwin8u on 06-24-13
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
The Man Who Would Be King
- A BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Blake Ritson, Peter Polycarpou, full cast, and others
- Length: 56 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kipling, our narrator, tells this strange story: he was running a newspaper in a big Indian city. In the hot stillness of one night when he was putting the paper to bed, two men came into his office. They were red-bearded giant Daniel Dravot and his friend Peachy Carnehan. These two 'gentlemen at large', as they called themselves, lately of the British army, had put together an insane and dangerous plan: they wanted to be Kings of Kafiristan, a mountainous region of Afghanistan.
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
The Man Who Would Be King [Classic Tales Edition]
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 1 hr and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Through the sands of the scalding deserts of India, two loafing vagabonds follow a half-scribbled map, heading for a land they hope to conquer.
-
-
wasn't the best
- By Clark Poulsen on 01-21-19
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
The Man Who Would Be King
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Felbrigg Napoleon Herriot
- Length: 1 hr and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two adventurers approach a journalist looking for help, they want plans, maps, and information about the mysterious Kafiristan. They have an audacious plan to carve themselves a kingdom in its mountainous terrain. Two men, versus an entire nation.
-
-
Pursuit of a Dream
- By Placeholder on 05-02-24
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
The Socratic Dialogues: Late Period, Volume 1
- Timaeus, Critias, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus
- By: Plato, Benjamin Jowett - translator
- Narrated by: David Rintoul, David Timson, Peter Kenny, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These five very different Socratic Dialogues date from Plato's later period, when he was revisiting his early thoughts and conclusions and showing a willingness for revision. In Timaeus (mainly a monologue read by David Timson in the title role), Plato considers cosmology in terms of the nature and structure of the universe, the ever-changing physical world and the unchanging eternal world. And he proposes a demiurge as a benevolent creator God.
-
-
Perfectly performed and antidote for what ails us
- By Gary on 02-23-18
By: Plato, and others
-
The Man Who Would Be King
- Unabridged
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 1 hr and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Man Who Would Be King is an enormously popular story by the legendary British writer, poet, and journalist Rudyard Kipling. In the tale, the narrator—a British newspaperman in India modeled after Kipling himself—meets two ex-military rogues named Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnehan, who have grand ambitions. They plan to load up on weapons, travel to the remote Afghan kingdom of Kafiristan and—through cunning and military force—become monarchs.
-
-
Perfect match of writer & narrator
- By Craig B. on 07-02-23
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
Captains Courageous
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Captains Courageous is Rudyard Kipling’s classic fable of a boy’s initiation into the fellowship of men, played out on the high seas of the late 1800s. When he falls overboard from a luxury liner, Harvey Cheyne, the spoiled son of an American millionaire, is rescued by a small New England fishing schooner. To earn his keep, Harvey must prove his worth in the only way the skipper and his hardy crew will accept: through the grueling mastery of a fisherman’s skills.
-
-
A MINOR sea story and a MINOR Kipling
- By Darwin8u on 06-24-13
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
The Man Who Would Be King
- A BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Blake Ritson, Peter Polycarpou, full cast, and others
- Length: 56 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kipling, our narrator, tells this strange story: he was running a newspaper in a big Indian city. In the hot stillness of one night when he was putting the paper to bed, two men came into his office. They were red-bearded giant Daniel Dravot and his friend Peachy Carnehan. These two 'gentlemen at large', as they called themselves, lately of the British army, had put together an insane and dangerous plan: they wanted to be Kings of Kafiristan, a mountainous region of Afghanistan.
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
The Man Who Would Be King [Classic Tales Edition]
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 1 hr and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Through the sands of the scalding deserts of India, two loafing vagabonds follow a half-scribbled map, heading for a land they hope to conquer.
-
-
wasn't the best
- By Clark Poulsen on 01-21-19
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
The Man Who Would Be King
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Felbrigg Napoleon Herriot
- Length: 1 hr and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two adventurers approach a journalist looking for help, they want plans, maps, and information about the mysterious Kafiristan. They have an audacious plan to carve themselves a kingdom in its mountainous terrain. Two men, versus an entire nation.
-
-
Pursuit of a Dream
- By Placeholder on 05-02-24
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
The Socratic Dialogues: Late Period, Volume 1
- Timaeus, Critias, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus
- By: Plato, Benjamin Jowett - translator
- Narrated by: David Rintoul, David Timson, Peter Kenny, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These five very different Socratic Dialogues date from Plato's later period, when he was revisiting his early thoughts and conclusions and showing a willingness for revision. In Timaeus (mainly a monologue read by David Timson in the title role), Plato considers cosmology in terms of the nature and structure of the universe, the ever-changing physical world and the unchanging eternal world. And he proposes a demiurge as a benevolent creator God.
-
-
Perfectly performed and antidote for what ails us
- By Gary on 02-23-18
By: Plato, and others
-
The Consolation of Philosophy
- By: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Consolation of Philosophy is one of the key works in the rich tradition of Western philosophy, partly because of the circumstances in which it was written. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c480-c524) was of aristocratic Roman birth and became consul and then master of offices at Ravenna, one of the highest posts under the Ostrogothic Roman ruler Theodoric. But Boethius was unjustly charged with treason in 524, and this led to house arrest, then torture and execution.
-
-
A Self-Help Bestseller since 524 AD
- By John on 01-25-17
-
The Man Who Would Be King
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: David Ian Davies
- Length: 1 hr and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rudyard Kipling's tale of two scruffy adventurers, Carnehan and Dravot, determined to leave India and rule the pagan tribes of another land as kings. But their quest does not end as they had plotted, and Carnehan returns to the narrator's newspaper office two years later in rags, to recount their victories and sudden fall -- Dravot's quite literally -- from their positions of glory.
-
-
This reading is unintelligibile
- By M. Leavell on 03-19-18
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
Kim
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kipling's masterpiece Kim is his final and most famous work and one of the first and greatest espionage stories ever written. It explores the life of Kimball O'Hara, an Irish orphan who spends his childhood as a vagrant in Lahore. When he befriends an aged Tibetan lama his life is transformed as he is requested to accompany him on a mysterious quest to find the legendary River of the Arrow and achieve Enlightenment.
-
-
Astonishing
- By Ron L. Caldwell on 05-08-09
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
The Dostoyevsky & Tolstoy Collection
- The Brothers Karamazov; Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; Demons; Notes From the Underground; War & Peace; Resurrection; and Anna Karenina
- By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: David Rintoul, Jonathan Keeble, Malk Williams
- Length: 233 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook, read by three Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy's greatest novels. Translations by Constance Garnett and Aylmer & Louise Maude. This audiobook is fully indexed. Once downloaded, each book and chapter will be listed so you can easily navigate to the individual section.
-
-
Incredible Collection of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky
- By James on 08-14-24
By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and others
-
A Collection of Rudyard Kipling's Short Stories: The Man Who Would Be King, The Mark of the Beast, Rikki Tikki Tavi, Just So Stories
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Matthew J Chandler-Smith
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the British Empire, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story. This collection includes "The Man Who Would Be King", "The Mark of the Beast", "Rikki Tikki Tavi", and "Just So Stories".
-
-
Great story, bad reading
- By Alexander Drainville on 08-16-21
By: Rudyard Kipling
-
The Philosophy Collection
- Meditations; The Book of Five Rings; Self Reliance; Beyond Good and Evil; Fear and Trembling; The Art of War; The Enchiridion & Discourses; The Analects of Confucius; The Republic; On the Nature of Things; & Letters from a Stoic
- By: Marcus Aurelius, Miyamoto Musashi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others
- Narrated by: Peter Noble, Malk Williams
- Length: 101 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This collection, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of 11 of the most renowned, widely-read, and essential philosophical works from Ancient Greece and Asia to 19th century America, including Meditations, The Republic, and more.
-
-
Fantastic Selection of Philisophical Essentials
- By Anonymous User on 05-07-25
By: Marcus Aurelius, and others
wonderful stories
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Where does The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories is among the best short story collections I have listened to so far. The stories were so condensed and crafted that I listened to the book back-to-back to pick up all of the nuances of details I had missed in my first reading.What other book might you compare The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories to and why?
I would compare The Man who Would Be King and Other Stories to Ray Bradbury's collections, because they were both great storytellers. However, Kipling's focus on India during the height of British colonial empire lends his stories the air of the exotic and the political.What about Sean Barrett’s performance did you like?
Sean Barrett performed the hundreds of characters with craft and creativity, especially women, children, soldiers, Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs. There were many castes and classes of characters he had to voice over a broad range of Anglo-Indian society at that time. When I heard Barrett, I heard India.If you could take any character from The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories out to dinner, who would it be and why?
If I could talk any character from The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories out to dinner, I would take Kipling himself. He had served as a reporter and correspondent in India. Any reporter and correspondent that served in his stories represented him, eager to hear stories in this exotic land in a time of conflict. Stories literally walked into the door of this reporter's office. A dinner with him would be fascinating because he would regale me for hours. As a storywriter myself, I would ask him questions about his craft.Any additional comments?
Read and listen to Kipling's books. He is an exemplary short story writer and a pioneer of its form.Worth a Second Read
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Outstanding Deep Mystical Stories
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The remaining compilation is an up and down experience, with several fantastic stories and a few that are so period and place specific that they were hard to follow.
I listened to the entire compilation and was more than glad I did. The final trilogy is worth any wading through earlier stories.
The narrator was quite good, but at times was so melodic that I lost track of the stories. This may not be entirely his fault as some of the lesser stories were at times difficult to follow in their own right.
Kipling remains a great storyteller in the best English tradition.
Hard To Dislike A Classic Storyteller
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Incredible stories
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Author & Reader Immerse You in Exotic Stories
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Here follows an annotated list of the stories.
1. The Man Who Would Be King (1888)
Two British con man "loafers" plan to become kings in Kafiristan, a mysterious, mountainous corner of Afghanistan, by smuggling in guns and training the locals in soldiery, agriculture, and infrastructure. How they succeed and fail makes an absorbing and appalling adventure story that satirizes the ignorant attempts of "superior" civs to force enlightenment on "inferior" ones, not unlike the Raj project.
2. The Phantom Rickshaw (1885/1890)
In this morbidly funny and moving psychological study of guilt Jack Pansay comes to see the phantoms of a rickshaw, its coolies, and the woman he wronged as more real than the living people around him. The doctor diagnoses overwork and indigestion, but the narrator figures that "there was a crack in Pansay's head and a little bit of the Dark World came through. . ."
3. My Own True Ghost Story (1888)
The narrator has never experienced any of the many ghosts in India, until he stays the night in a dak-bungalow. Convinced he's heard a spectral billiard game in the next room he's planning to write a ghost story with which to paralyze the British Empire-- until he takes a peek into the room.
4. The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes (1885)
After riding out into the desert to kill a wild dog, feverish engineer Morrowbie Jukes comes to his senses in a sandy crater. He finds himself among dozens of skeletal and smelly Indians dumped there after failing to die from fatal diseases. Rather than give Jukes his due respect as a white Sahib, the living dead laugh at or ignore him, and one ex-Brahmin even tries to master him. There is no escape from the pit. The vivid details and surreal horror--existence pared down to eating roast crow--prefigure Kafka or Kobo Abe.
5. The Mark of the Beast (1890)
"The gods of the heathen are stone and brass, and any attempt to deal with them otherwise is justly condemned." Everything in this story contradicts that sentiment, after a drunken Brit stubs his cigar out on the forehead of a statue of the Hindu god Hanuman and starts behaving bestially. A doctor diagnoses hydrophobia, but the narrator and the policeman Strickland suspect the curse of a leper priest.
6. Without Benefit of Clergy (1890)
John Holden is a British bachelor civil servant in India by day, an unsanctioned husband of a 16-year-old Muslim Indian girl by night. When Ameera bears a son, the couple experiences "absolute happiness," but "The delight of that life was too perfect to endure." There is great beauty, love, and pain in the story: "It was not like this when we counted the stars."
7. The Sending of Dana Da (1888)
Kipling mocks Anglo theosophy and spiritualist religious types via a mysterious (con) man's supernatural "sending" of kittens to an ailurophobic foe of the narrator.
8. Wee Willie Winkie (1888)
The 6-year-old son of the regimental colonel follows the foolish fiancé of Lt. Coppy across a verboten dried riverbed into Afghanistan, the land of the "Bad Men" ("goblins"). His little boy-talk is almost too cute (e.g., "Vis is a bad place, and I've bwoken my awwest"), his awareness that he is the "child of the dominant race" repugnant. And the bandits know that if they harm the captives, the British regiment ("devils") "will fire and rape and plunder for a month till nothing remains."
9. On the City Wall (1889)
A prostitute, her admirer, a political prisoner, a Muslim festival in a Hindu part of Lahore, and the narrator's perceptions of all those. Love, faith, India, changing times, and the difficulty (and hypocrisy) of British Raj rule. This is a great story: funny, ironic, sensual, romantic, political, and moving.
10. The Education of Otis Yeere (1888)
In this comedy of manners, Mrs. Hauksbee feels empty and wants power, so she applies all her formidable strategy and style to make a man. She molds boring Otis Yeere, whose career in the Raj is going nowhere, into a smart Man on the Rise. With its many Wildean lines (e.g., "A man is never so happy as when he is talking about himself"), the story is funny, but Otis' broken heart and Mrs. Hauksbee's ego sting.
11. The Judgment of Dungara (1888)
When a well-meaning but ignorant German missionary husband and wife succeed too well in converting the Buria Kol, a nude and lazy folk who worship a God called Dungara, the sly priest of Dungara takes action.
12. Baa Baa Black Sheep (1888)
This fictional account of the experience of Kipling and his sister uproots 5-year-old Punch and 3-year-old Judy from their idyllic lives with their parents in Bombay and inserts them for five years into the Dickensian hell of Downe Lodge in England.
The reader of the audiobook, Sean Barrett, greatly enhances the stories, handling the many characters--young or old, male or female, British or Indian, sane or mad--all just right.
If you've read Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills, you know what to expect here, though the stories in this collection are longer and fewer. Both sets of stories provide a vision of British rule in India (and of "civilized" rule of "uncivilized" peoples anywhere) more complex than merely, "Kipling was an imperial apologist." His humane interest in all kinds of people--from prostitutes to priests, from 6-year-old British Colonel's sons to aged Sikh revolutionaries--shines through.
Varied Stories about Love, Life & Death in the Raj
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Sad
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fantastic
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Thank you!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.