Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865. His early years, lived among exotic sights and sounds, were a constant delight, but from the age of five he was sent to foster parents in the UK, only returning to Lahore in 1882 to work on the 'Civil and Military Gazette' as a reporter. Here his writing career blossomed - along with poems and novels, numerous short stories flowed from his pen, the best of which were published as 'Plain Tales From The Hills' in 1888. Kipling skillfully compresses the whole of India into a single volume: the fabulous customs, the grandiose scenery, India's kaleidoscopic ethnic mix of tribe, caste and rank, and over it all, the British Raj. The tensions and absurdities of the subcontinent are mercilessly catalogued and exposed in this remarkable series of tales.