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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.8
EAN: 9780140183528
ISBN: 0140183523
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 368
Publication Date: 1987-09-01
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Reading Level: Young Adult
Studio: Penguin Classics

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

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Review of Kim
Review: Great book...have been reading it in a hisotry class...easy to read, flows well and engaging.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Kim: East and West in combination
Review: Kim is Rudyard Kipling's mysterious India: a combination of East and West, of mystery and mysticism. Kim is not the India of history books. It is not a neat historical fiction nor is it a simple adventure story in a slightly exotic setting.

Kim was published in 1901 and is the story of the orphaned son (Kimball O'Hara, known as Kim) of a soldier in an Irish regiment. The novel is set in the Indian subcontinent where Kim spends his childhood as a waif in Lahore.

The story of Kim's journeys, as he moves between the East and the West can be enjoyed as an adventure story or read as a window into British colonialism. Kim himself straddles a number of different worlds but never really belongs to any of them completely.

While the novel includes a richly detailed portrait of Indian life and assumes that western mastery is desirable, Kipling frequently identifies similarities between the cultures of India and those of the Europeans in India.

This is a novel which I think is best read twice. Once as a child - for the adventure and mystery and again as an adult for the broader story.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Good Spy Story That You Really Need to Read for Yourself
Review: 'Kim', taken solely on its own terms, is a late 19th century adventure tale, an early spy story, a travelogue of northern India, a coming-of-age story all set in the midst of the Great Game, the Russo-British contest for imperial dominance in Central Asia. It's a good tale well told, if the language is somewhat dated for the modern reader.

But, of course, 'Kim' is generally not simply taken on it own terms because its author Rudyard Kipling came to personify British imperialism as much as Lord Kitchener. The Norton Edition includes excellent articles that provide historical context as well as several critical essays. I consider myself an anti-imperialist, but also admittedly somewhat of a romantic about the British Empire, and I did not detect jingoism in 'Kim'.

Readers interested in even more background will want to read Quest for Kim: In Search of Kipling's Great Game. Readers needing to be disabused of romanticism about British imperialism may want to consider Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya.

At the end of the day, 'Kim' is quite a good adventure tale and a book that really need to read for yourself. Highly Recommended.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: My Favorite Novel
Review: After fifty plus years of reading, I think I can say that Kim is my favorite novel. I'm not sure it is the best novel I ever read, whatever "best" might mean, and it certainly isn't the most profound, but there is simply no other book I have enjoyed as much or have reread as often. Many other Amazon reviewers have said that they liked the book very much, often for different reasons: some like the "Great Game" aspect and others enjoy the rich narrative description of India for which the book is justly famous. (A few reviewers found the book "difficult", apparently because of the language device that Kipling uses when speakers are speaking in languages other than English, or for Kipling's use of unfamiliar words, and others found it boring, a criticism I find nearly incomprehensible. I honestly believe that if you find Kim boring, you just don't like to read fiction, except perhaps at the level of Tom Clancy novels. And don't be put off by those reviews that found the book difficult. I presume these readers were looking for a continuation of The Jungle Book and found an adult novel instead. Kim is much easier reading than the novels of many of Kipling's contemporaries, such as Conrad or James, and is no more difficult than Twain.)

At least one other reviewer shares my view that in essence Kim is a coming of age novel, and one of the best, in a league with Huckleberry Finn and A Portrait of the Artist. The Great Game provides the book with the bones of a plot, and Kipling's description of India, much like Twain's description of the Mississippi River environs in Huckleberry Finn, published 16 years before Kim, is the flesh. But the heart of the book is the development of the relationship between Kim and the Red Lama, the fundamental story of two people, one an orphan boy and the other an elderly mystic, finding many of the things they are seeking in caring for and looking after one another.

Again, it is hard to avoid comparing Kim with Huckleberry Finn. The core of the latter book is the development of the relationship between Huck and Jim, and it seems likely that Kipling was influenced by the earlier book. Kipling had clearly read and admired Huckleberry Finn, and once referred to its author as "The great and God-like Clemens." Not that I find the notion that Kipling was influenced by Twain to in any way diminish Kim. It is an absolutely wonderful book and I envy anyone who hasn't read it that is about to do so. Come to think of it, that's true of both Kim and Huckleberry Finn.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: It's too hard
Review: Unless you enjoy working hard at reading novels, I don't recommend this book. Before you start take a look at the 411 notes in the back that you will have to study (unless you know already know) to get something out of this work.

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