Product Description: A white youth in India, becomes friends with an old ascetic priest, the lama. The boy juggles Imperialist life with his spiritual bond to the lama, who searches for redemption from the Wheel of Life. KIM captures the opulence of India's exotic landscape, overlaid by the uneasy presence of the British Raj. This edition of Kipling's classic masterpiece features a critically acclaimed Introduction by Edward W.
Amazon.com Review: One of the particular pleasures of reading Kim is the full range of emotion, knowledge, and experience that Rudyard Kipling gives his complex hero. Kim O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier stationed in India, is neither innocent nor victimized. Raised by an opium-addicted half-caste woman since his equally dissolute father's death, the boy has grown up in the streets of Lahore:
Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim was white--a poor white of the very poorest.
From his father and the woman who raised him, Kim has come to believe that a great destiny awaits him. The details, however, are a bit fuzzy, consisting as they do of the woman's addled prophecies of "'a great Red Bull on a green field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and'--dropping into English--'nine hundred devils.'"
In the meantime, Kim amuses himself with intrigues, executing "commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion." His peculiar heritage as a white child gone native, combined with his "love of the game for its own sake," makes him uniquely suited for a bigger game. And when, at last, the long-awaited colonel comes along, Kim is recruited as a spy in Britain's struggle to maintain its colonial grip on India. Kipling was, first and foremost, a man of his time; born and raised in India in the 19th century, he was a fervid supporter of the Raj. Nevertheless, his portrait of India and its people is remarkably sympathetic. Yes, there is the stereotypical Westernized Indian Babu Huree Chander with his atrocious English, but there is also Kim's friend and mentor, the Afghani horse trader Mahub Ali, and the gentle Tibetan lama with whom Kim travels along the Grand Trunk Road. The humanity of his characters consistently belies Kipling's private prejudices, and raises Kim above the mere ripping good yarn to the level of a timeless classic. --Alix Wilber
An Irish Orphan in India in the 19th century This is sort of an Indian James Bond story with a real holy man guru as the second hero. Kim is Kimball O'Hara whose Dad was in an Irish regiment in India when he died. He left his son as a street orphan in India. Kim finds friends is strange places from a Buddhist lama to an Afghanistani horse trader and a British spy master. He is enlisted in the British Secret Service by those who should be trying to bring him up right? Thus, in the service of what is today thought to be evil as the British Empire's colonialization of India, he wonders as the servant of the lama doing a secret mission against the Russians. What I liked most about this book is the look at Indian multiculturalism in the 19th century.
This edition of Kim is full of misprints - buy another Kim is a great story, but this is NOT the edition to buy. It's too bad, because it's a handsome book, sturdily built, and with the largest text out there (which is why I bought it). But unfortunately the text is full of misprints. Random periods, missing letters, wrong words, and a section of repeated text like a cut and paste operation gone astray. It's a bad value, and a worse gift. Move on...
Kim This book was well-written. The characters are not as well-rounded as I expected although, by Victorian standards, they are. There are places where the writing is almost juvenile - probably the reason the book is often found on lists for young people - and others where the writing is complex enough for adult enjoyment. If I had to rate an age group for which this book would be appropriate, I would say from those that read at a grade five level to age 90. It is a good adventure book for grade school and a good book for adults seeking a little escapism in an unfamiliar time and place - a Victorian spy story to rival the more modern James Bond.
Kim by Kipling: the touchstone for 200 years of spy novels Kipling's KIM is perhaps the best spy novel of the last 200 years. It is strikingly contemporary in its portrayal of the dark and dirty side of the spy game, its robust understanding of India, and its honest respect for the myriad ethnic differences of that complex nation. The darker works of John le Carre such as THE SPY WHO CAME IN FORM THE COLD come close to matching the weltshmertz but not the grit and sophistication of Kipling's presentation of the Great Game as it was played in India. KIM paints a world in which no one can be trusted and any, even children, may be sacrificed to advance government policy.
The reader would do well to do a little research into the Great Game, the first Cold War, an espionage battle between Britain and Imperial Russia between the early 1800s and the Russian Revolution (and in fact, until India's independence in 1947). Generations of British spies earned their bones in the Great Game, and the lessons they learned shaped British intelligence through the Cold War. Many have tried to convey the utter creepiness of espionage at the street level. No one succeeds like Kipling.
KIM by Rudyard Kipling Kim is Rudyard Kipling's novel about a white orphan, Kimball O'Hara, in India. It was first published in 1901, and is often considered to be Kipling's best novel. In the novel, Kim befriends a Tibetan Lama and becomes his disciple. Later, the British force him to attend a British school. Afterward, he rejoins the Lama, and becomes involved in political intrigue between Britain and Russia.
Kim is noteworthy for Kipling's lush depictions of India, its people, its culture, and its religions. In spite of everything that goes on in this novel, there's no real plot - it's just Kim's wanderings around India. And this is the vehicle Kipling uses to celebrate India. This is well and good, but it isn't all that interesting. The story loses quite a lot of steam after Kim gets into British custody. Perhaps the story holds more allure for those of us who have not been to India (I have, several times).
Ultimately, this is about as good a portrayal of India as you can find in a novel. That is what this book should be read for, not its story.
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