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by: Rudyard Kipling
Amazon.com's Price: $7.00 Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.8
EAN: 9780140183528
ISBN: 0140183523
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: September 01, 1987
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Reading Level: Young Adult
Sales Rank: 275080
Studio: Penguin Classics
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Editorial Review:
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
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - 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. ... Read More
Rating: - A wonderful but somewhat esoteric story of India
Kim is the most popular of Rudyard Kipling's novels and has received both critical acclaim and negative reviews over the years. Both assessments are valid to some degree. On the positive side, Kipling has written what is acknowledged to be the best description of colonial India ever created by a native or a foreigner. Much of the negative commentary on the book has come from the intertwining of the story of a boy and a holy man each seeking his dream (good) with the political and military intrigues of the ... Read More
Rating: - Review of Kim
Great book...have been reading it in a hisotry class...easy to read, flows well and engaging.
Rating: - Kim: East and West in combination
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 ... Read More
Rating: - A Good Spy Story That You Really Need to Read for Yourself
'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. ... Read More
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