Upcoming Ernest Bramah "Kai Lung" Collection

[owlcroft]

The estimable Mike Berro, who runs the Ernest Bramah News web site, reports that Paul Durrant's Durrant Publishing will be issuing--nominally in or before July of next year--a volume tentatively titled Kai Lung: Eleven (a title patterned after the old extant Kai Lung: Six volume). This volume will not only reprint in their entirety that half-dozen stories in the fabulously difficult-to-find (and killer expensive) Kai Lung: Six volume, plus another rare tale from another rare book (The Specimen Case), but also will include a full four never-before-published Kai Lung tales.

If it happens that you are unfamiliar with the Kai Lung tales, which I and many consider among the finest gems of fantastic fiction, you can look here for more:

• David Langford's Crime and Chinoiserie page
• Mike Berro's aforementioned Ernest Bramah News
• Cosma Shalizi's Ernest Bramah appreciation
• My Ernest Bramah page

In Bramah's time--the 1930s or so--the Kai Lung tales were widely known: Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet exchange quotations from Bramah, as does a character in one of Thorne Smith's novels (and there are doubtless many more such references I wot not of).

Of the six "Kai Lung" books (one of which really isn't--it's another faux chinois tale "as related by Kai Lung", and not even that appears in all editions), three are easy to find, having been issued in mass-market versions by, among others, the old Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. But Kai Lung Under the Mulberry Tree, despite a relatively recent re-issue, remains scarce and expensive, and Kai Lung: Six seems almost literally priceless these days, so this is a real treat.

Durrant reports that he is intending to offer it as paperback and ebook, with the cost for either being in the low two-digit range. At present, the publisher is in the first proof-reading/typesetting stage. When issued, the books will be available through the usual sources (Amazon, B&N, etc.): this is not, thank Heaven, a limited-run edition.

(Incidentally, Jack Vance is said to be a great admirer of Bramah's Kai Lung work, and there is not a little of the Bramah style in the speech patterns of Vance's characters.)

[AuntiePam]

This is good news. I've only read one Bramah -- Kai Lung Folds His Mat. It'll be nice to have all the stories in one nice edition.

Please post a reminder when the book is available for purchase! Otherwise I'll forget.

[Julian]

Originally Posted by AuntiePam

Please post a reminder when the book is available for purchase! Otherwise I'll forget.

Ahum, yes. So might I

[owlcroft]

Originally Posted by AuntiePam

This is good news. I've only read one Bramah -- Kai Lung Folds His Mat. It'll be nice to have all the stories in one nice edition. . . .

I should clarify that the upcoming release is not all the Kai Lung stories: it is all that were in the last collection published, the now-rare Kai Lung: Six, plus several more not previously published (at least not in book form). Omitting The Moon of Much Gladness (aka, purely for commercial reasons, as The Return of Kai Lung), an excellently amusing book but not truly a Kai Lung Tale, the corpus includes:

• The Wallet of Kai Lung - a few bucks at most; common (even available new via POD)
• Kai Lung's Golden Hours - a few bucks at most; common (even available new via POD)
• Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat - a few bucks at most; common (even available new via POD)
• Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree - c. $30 & up (hardcover); scarce but not rare
• Kai Lung: Six - c. $100; rare

Indeed, a 1936 first-edition hardcover omnibus of the first three is available used for $30 to $40 or so delivered, and apparently in decent condition. (See BookFinder and AddAll.)