Kim is a fabulous adventure story set in India during the former British Empire.
It tells the story of a street-wise but highly moral Anglo-Indian boy who becomes enmeshed in “the Great Game” -– the competition between Britain and Russia for control over Asia.
Taking time off from his role as the traveling companion of an aged Tibetan lama, the boy is trained as a spy, matches wits with various evildoers, and wins out in the end. So much more than just a spy story, Kim is one of the most enjoyable books.
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.
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.
From his father and the woman who raised him, Kim has come to believe that a great destiny awaits him.
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.
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.
Kim is a rogue like Huck Finn and Oliver Twist. He is the man for all opportunities and is called the "Friend of all Mankind".
Kim is probably one of the best books ever written on India. This treasure describes India with a love and power of observation that is absolutely captivating and charming at the same time.
Rudyard Kipling, the Nobel Prize-winning author of the Jungle Book, brought you another masterpiece.
