Al Final del Camino

Escrito por Rudyard Kipling

Narrado por Víctor Prieto

Cuatro caballeros británicos, que viven afincados en India, se ven obligados a ser amigos por las circunstancias. Hummil es ingeniero; Lowndes es funcionario; Motram, agrimensor y Spurstow, médico. El cuarteto tiene la costumbre de reunirse en casa de Hummil todos los domingos para jugar a las cartas.
Los cuatro tienen muy pocas cosas en común, pero se necesitan para mantener su estatus frente a la población indígena. Un domingo, tras la cena, Motram y Lowndes vuelven a sus hogares, mientras que Hummil y Spurstow se quedan a pasar la noche allí. Hummil sufre un ataque de naturaleza desconocida, y es atendido por el Doctor Spurstow. A la mañana siguiente, el médico se va, una vez que se ha asegurado de que su amigo se ha recuperado.
Fieles a la cita semanal, Motram, Lowndes y Spurstow llegan a la casa de Hummil y se topan con una noticia totalmente inesperada con respecto a Hummil, el anfitrión; un suceso que sobrecoge a sus tres amigos porque tiene todos los visos de estar envuelto en el más inexplicable misterio...

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: Editorial Libervox Audio
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 1 ene 2014
• ISBN: 9788416080052

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English author and poet who began writing in India and shortly found his work celebrated in England. An extravagantly popular, but critically polarizing, figure even in his own lifetime, the author wrote several books for adults and children that have become classics, Kim, The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, Captains Courageous and others. Although taken to task by some critics for his frequently imperialistic stance, the author’s best work rises above his era’s politics. Kipling refused offers of both knighthood and the position of Poet Laureate, but was the first English author to receive the Nobel prize.

Comentarios para Al Final del Camino

[elpaca · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Should I have been looking for some parallel to the ongoing situation in the -stan's? Or just enjoy the story?

[dulac3_1 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

Is it wrong for me to say that I thought the movie was better? Generally I don't find this to be the case, but perhaps this was one place where the exception proved the rule. Still it's a great tale that I do remember enjoying...maybe if I had read it before seeing the movie I wouldn't have felt this way. It just seemed to me that the movie was actually a bit more fleshed out in a few areas of plot and character than the story was.

[rajivc_18 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

This is a short book. I saw the movie years ago, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. I thought that the movie was brilliant.This book, short that it is, packs in a punch. It is rich in imagery, it is rich in style. Not one word is wasted. You are left thinking deeply about the imaginary events that would have taken place in the mountains of Afghanistan.It is a story of megalomania, it is a story of superstition. It is a painting cast in words.It's a story for a lost time, yet one that is alive today.

[fromkin_1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

A brief, punchy story that John Huston made into a wonderful film with Sean Connery and Michael Caine. Huston and Gladys Hill kept to the outline of Kipling's story (the story is actually an outline itself), and fleshed out the characters unforgettably. This is really Peachy Carnahan's story, and his telling of his and Daniel Dravot's adventures in Kafiristan (northeast Afghanistan)is heartbreaking, despite the con artists' hubris and stupidity. I suppose this is a microcosm of the British experience in Afghanistan - as well as the Russians'. Whether colonialism writ large, or colonialism writ small, it all seemed doomed from the start.

[pondlife_1 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

I'd seen the film version years ago, so I already knew the story when I read the book. I was surprised to find that it was a short story rather than a novel - I'd assumed that the film had condensed the book, but soon realised that it had just about the same content.Reading the book made me realise how good the casting of Michael Caine and Sean Connery in the film was. I found myself reading Peachy's lines in Michael Caine's voice, and Daniel's in Connery's voice.All in all, this was a good enjoyable short story. I found the observations on collonialism a bit too obvious, but still enjoyed it as a humerous adventure yarn.

[domingosantos_1 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

A short story that makes for a quick and entertaining read. I was a bit thrown by some of the spellings in the dialogue, but, thanks to phonics, was able to figure out most of the strange, if not misspelled, words. The surprise was the references to the Order of Masons, and the pre-existence of the Masonic symbol.

[mrtall_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This story of two English adventurers determined to raise themselves into rulers in trackless Afghanistan is vintage Kipling. It's deadly serious, yet playful and ironic; detailed, yet broad in scope; fanciful, yet strangely plausible. His characters leap off the page, demonstrated vividly in here. The Man Who Would Be King is freely available at Project Guttenberg, and is an excellent point of entry for Kipling's work.

[kevn57-163679 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

Short adventure story of a pair of British rouges trying to set themselves up as kings.

[aliceanna-1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Good adventure story as well as a nice character study. Power corrupts ...

[jimelkins · Calificación: 2 de 5 estrellas]

What happens when you read something in which the form, public, content, style, content, and voice are entirely familiar, to the point where they do not register as objects of thought, but only as tokens of the familiar? That's my experience reading "The Man Who Would Be King." Kipling is an author who does not need to be read to be experienced, because every mannerism, every narrative move, each racist and colonialist cliché, is already lodged in our culture. I'd seen the movie, which is a John Huston epic, and I had thought the book must be long: but on my e-reader it's only 80 pages, and Kipling only needs one-third of that to tell his story. The speed of his narrative might be an indication that even for him, the subjects and interests of the story were so familiar they only needed to be telegraphed.Reading is an empty experience: how can any of the reality effects work? How can any of the bids for drama and affect produce the effects they were apparently intended to have? Nearly everything runs automatically. I am not impatient to know what happens; I am impatient at my own reading speed. Nothing disturbs my racing eye. My thoughts are placid, distracted. Every once in a while, a character says something colorful, and I make a mental note to remember it, but it's so trivial, so uninteresting, that I immediately forget it: I had only noticed it because everything around it was so blank, so free of interest. Kipling has died a cultural death: the work is empty, and there isn't even any reason left to mourn for it.But then again, this must be the experience of millions of readers who consume murder mysteries, romances, and any other formula fiction. If I did feel anything reading "The Man Who Would be King," I would have to question how much I had thought about the books I have read, and the movies I've seen, depicting the British colonial experience. I'd have to wonder whether I had ever considered what generates the interest in epic adventures and romantic journeys. I would have to do some serious reconsidering of my own capacity to reflect on what I read. There can't be a thrill here, if everything that presents the thrill is such a frail cliché. If you like Kipling in the twenty-first century, you have to be an unreflective reader.