The Kai Lung books are really short-story collections, whose disparate, rambling tales are knitted together by framing narratives featuring the eponymous travelling storyteller. The third in Bramah?s Kai Lung series of fantasy novels. ?Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat?, like the others in the series consists of thinly connected stories related by Kai Lung, concerning the adventures of the storyteller and his lady love Hwa-Mei versus the wicked but ever-smooth Mandarin Shan Tien and his despicable accomplice Ming-Shu. Kai Lung?s adventures are related with humor and irony, his shrewdness and wisdom conveyed in euphemisms, paradoxes and parables. Bramah?s droll writing style went a long way toward making the Kai Lung series so popular. The Kai Lung books are easily Bramah?s greatest achievement; they?re as worthy of their somewhat neglected place in the pantheon of British humour as the delightful comic trivia of Wodehouse.
