Rudyard Kipling no escribió más que una novela, y ni siquiera la escribió solo, sino en colaboración con su cuñado y agente, Wolcott Balestrier. No obstante, los relatos que escribió se cuentan por centenares, y entre ellos hay un puñado digno de figurar por derecho propio en las antologías más exigentes del género.

Maugham's Choice of Kipling's Best is a collection of sixteen short stories by Rudyard Kipling, as selected by W. Somerset Maugham, who has also contributed an introductory essay to this collection.

I found this to be a wonderful and fascinating collection of short stories. Kipling was a masterful story-teller, something that is evident on nearly every page of this collection. The stories are diverse in their settings, primarily India but also England and the United States. Similarly there is wide variety in the types of characters and the situations of their lives.

Three of the stories I enjoyed the most were "The Finest Story In The World," The Man Who Would Be King, and The Village That Voted The Earth Was Flat. Here is just one example of the wonderful way in which Kipling uses the English language: "There was neither sky, sun, nor horizon, -nothing but a brown purple haze of heat. It was as though the earth were dying of apoplexy."

This is an excellent collection of short stories and I highly commend it. Most books I read and pass on to another home. This volume will remain here for future enjoyment, although it is available for loan. ( )