Rudyard Kipling, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1907, has long been considered an important and vibrant, even controversial, storyteller and poet. The Wish House and Other Stories is a collection of Kiplingโs finest works, including the stories โIn the House of Suddhoo,โ โThe Disturber of Traffic,โ and โThe Eye of Allah,โ the poems โThe Runners,โ โThe Return of the Children,โ and โThe Last Ode,โ and his famous story about Afghanistan, โThe Man Who Would Be King.โ Each piece was selected by poet and scholar Craig Raine, who writes in his Preface, โWe need to think about Kipling. He is our greatest short-story writer, but one whose achievement is more complex and surprising than even his admirers recognize.โ