The Man Who Would be King

Blurb

"The Man Who Would Be King" is a novella by Rudyard Kipling. It is about two British adventurers in British India who become kings of Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan. The story was inspired by the exploits of James Brooke, an Englishman who became the first White Rajah of Sarawak in Borneo; and by the travels of American adventurer Josiah Harlan, who was granted the title Prince of Ghor in perpetuity for himself and his descendants. It incorporates a number of other factual elements such as locating the story in eastern Afghanistan's Kafiristan and the European-like appearance of many of Kafiristan's Nuristani people, and an ending modelled on the return of the head of the explorer Adolf Schlagintweit to colonial administrators.
The story was first published in The Phantom Rickshaw and other Eerie Tales. It also appeared in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Child Stories in 1895, and in numerous later editions of that collection.
A radio adaption was broadcast on the show Escape on 7 July 1947 and again on 1 August 1948.