Summary
Summary of Indian Tales
Who it’s for
For readers who love short stories with a strong voice, soldiers’ friendships, ghosts and adventure, and anyone curious about everyday life in British India.
What this book is
Indian Tales gathers short fiction by Rudyard Kipling, set in the India he knew as a young man. Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865 and sent to school in England as a child. At sixteen he went back to India and worked as a journalist at newspapers in Lahore and Allahabad. The stories grew out of that work. He needed short, sharp pieces to fill a newspaper column, and he found his material in the clubs, barracks, railway carriages and hill stations around him.
In this book you meet soldiers, civil servants, officers' wives, children, missionaries, adventurers and Indian men and women who live at the edge of the British world. Some tales are funny, some are tender, and some are cruel or frightening. Kipling writes with speed and a sharp ear for how people talk. You get a picture of the British Raj as one writer saw it, with its pride, boredom, loneliness and blind spots. Let us begin with the young newspaperman who wrote these tales.
In this summary
- 1A young journalist turns news into storiesFree
- 2Hill station society is small and sharp
- 3Three soldiers bring the barracks to life
- 4Love across the line brings trouble
- 5Children, ghosts and strange places
- 6A sharp voice and a divided view of empire
Key point 1 of 6
A young journalist turns news into stories
The tales begin in a newsroom. In the 1880s Kipling worked for the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, a paper written for the British community in northern India. He had to fill space, and he had to do it quickly. That pressure shaped his style. A story had to open fast, make a point, and finish in a few pages.
He was also a restless walker and listener. He spent nights in the city, visited barracks, rode trains and sat in clubs. He heard gossip, confessions, jokes and ghost stories, and he turned them into fiction. Many of his first collections were printed cheaply and sold at railway bookstalls, so they were meant to be read on a journey.
This background explains the feel of the book. The stories rarely lecture. They show a small moment in a life, a quarrel, a trick, a death or a bet, and trust you to see the meaning. Kipling often writes as an insider who knows every rule of the Anglo-Indian world and expects you to learn them quickly.
The young age of the author matters too. Kipling was still in his early twenties when the first of these tales appeared. He writes with a confidence that sometimes shocks, and with a sharp wit that can be unkind. Keep in mind that you are reading a clever young man who is watching a society that fascinates him, and who is already very sure of his own eye.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Who’s who
- Mulvaney
- Mulvaney is an Irish veteran in the British army in India, sharing barracks life with Ortheris and Learoyd.
- Ortheris
- Ortheris is a sharp-tongued private from London, devoted to his rifle and his comrades Mulvaney and Learoyd.
- Learoyd
- Learoyd is a quiet, strong Yorkshire private who shares barracks life and its troubles with Mulvaney and Ortheris.
- Wee Willie Winkie
- Wee Willie Winkie is a colonel's young son who takes duty seriously and wants to protect those he cares for.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 176,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 11 h 40 min
- Listening time19 h 30 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 14 other languages