Cabbages and Kings: Mint Editions

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Cabbages and Kings is a 1904 novel written by O. Henry, set in a fictitious Central American country called the Republic of Anchuria.

It takes its title from the poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter," featured in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Its plot contains famous elements in the poem: shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings.

The novel contains various short stories, all of which occur in the "banana republic" of Anchuria, and are connected to each other. In fact, while Sidney Porter (aka O.Henry) wrote this mainly about the fruit companies in USA who were putting up puppet governments in Latin America to be able to grow these fruits, unrestricted by regulation, one can further extend the metaphor to other such enterprises world over. And that is where the true joy of reading this book comes in.

Each chapter tells you one part of the story - of a country called Anchuria, its dictator, and how he is replaced by another one "chosen by his people" in a "civic uprising" orchestrated by merchants funding this nationalist. All seen from the porch of a few foreign merchants, including the author (Sidney Porter wrote this while he was trying to escape charges of embezzlement from the USA - and this is what makes O.Henry himself such a colourful character)

A fairly well-knit collection of short stories, each displaying O. Henry's knack for concealing while he puts on a show. The book has a comic portrayal of the tropics, both its volatile political climate and its meteorological one. There is an over-arcing plot that runs through the stories, concerning the ruling potentate's abdication and sudden departure with the nation's treasury funds, creating a mystery that isn't solved until the final vignette.

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