Before You Begin

Before you begin.

These four tales move through the roads, clubs, bazaars, rooftops, bungalows and mess rooms of British India. Their narrators meet a suspected ghost, a professional wonder-worker, a frightened father, a skeptical woman and a quiet young officer underestimated by his regiment.

Kipling repeatedly lets performance masquerade as supernatural power or social certainty. Sounds travel through a ruined bungalow; white kittens become instruments of belief; a speaking head turns fear into profit; and a theatrical disguise reverses a cruel joke.

The historical setting includes colonial attitudes and language preserved from the original text. This edition keeps that record intact while its visual interpretation treats every figure as an individualized person rather than a type.