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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 --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.
Review
with stars.”
—The Atlantic Monthly
He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher-the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Classic,
By R. Mitra "author" (Long Island, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Kim (Hardcover)
So why am I writing a review of a book published in the early 1900s?I hope some young people will read all the positive reviews and pick up the book and have a great time. No Stephen King or Dean Koontz wrote this. A wonderfully narrated book of a time that is not coming back. The language is smooth as flowing honey and the Indian words are used with the skill of one born and brought up there (Kipling was later sent to England to complete his schooling). Enjoyable even after years and years. I would recommend to buy the hardcover (Everyman Library) edition. A bargain at Amazon's prices
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
ignore agendas, resist the New System,
By Ludwig Strauss (Wareham, MA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: 20th Century Kim (Paperback)
I wonder if Kipling's most vitriolic critics have read anything about him (or by him) besides caustic post-colonial dissertations. Surely they can't pretend that they've read KIM with silly labels such as "imperialistic," "ignorant," "globalizing," and "racist." I advise these misguided flowers to read without agendas. But of course reading without agendas nowadays would so offend our academies that it's absolutely impossible. KIM *is* a simple story, as one reviewer already mentioned, that does not really deal with colonial "assumptions" whatsoever. In fact, I marvel at how people ignore the basic fact that Kim resisted his Sahib identity when we could only sympathize with him. Kim contrasts well with THE JUNGLE BOOK'S Mowgli because he disdains most social groups, preferring above all his lama and "the road." If anything, his "yearning" toward colonization near the book's end (itself dubiously proven) probably reflects his educational indoctrination, if anything else. Kipling surely wasn't a stupid writer, and it's probably no coincidence that Kim turns to colonialism only after the Sahibs educate and recruit him in "the Great Game." Whether that's good or bad is irrelevant; Kipling does not justify, advocate or endorse colonialism in KIM. Nor does he waste space needlessly attacking it. Why do people need fiction to contain ideology? Why can't people understand that some stories are about characters and that authors imposing their voices is sometimes unnecessary? "Adult" perspectives in the novel, which critics charge could never come from Kim, come from adult characters. Duh. Kipling, unlike his postmodern butchers, did not write with an agenda. Unfortunately for his reputation, Kipling professed elsewhere that he favored colonialism and the White Man's Burden. Readers, even more unfortunately, approach his books with such prejudices, prepared to pounce on his literature at the slightest provocation and blame him for not explicitly condemning British imperialism. I'm sorry that people hold such depressing views of how fiction should be written. A note on the Penguin edition: I found its CONSTANT "scholastic" footnotes irritating and insulting. I can read a book without being told what Buddhism is, thanks. Then again, all those numbers detract from the story itself and advocate the editor's agenda that this book isn't to be enjoyed at all, but only to be jeered at in a postmodern armpit.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
a mild but quite thorough story of initiation:,
By asphlex "asphlex" (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: 20th Century Kim (Paperback)
Kim is honestly a fun book. This is not to say that there aren't lapses, tedious mirings that swirl around the overall ebullient excitment, but these stem more from an excess of the author's wordplay than from anything else. The story is on the surface rather quaint: Orphaned British tyke grows up alone in India, has the internal wits and capacity to learn basic survival skills and has the ambition and sense of humor to make something of a name for himself. From there he meets a 'holy man'--not one in the traditional sense of Western (or even Eastern) literature, but here is more of a true seeker, someone not pulled down by the conventions of organized religiousosity, but one moreso looking for a one-on-one understanding of God. There is a great deal of subtle and transmogrified mythologizing--the traditional fables bowled over by reality, the high, idealistic hopes often stunted in birth by more rational and everyday life concerns. Kim, street-smart and wise before his time, is fascinated by the holy man's honesty and feels some compelling need to accompany the man on his random journies.Kim is the story of two journies, certainly the holy man's as well as Kim's own, the reckoning with cultural identity and the east/west clash in a time of subterfuge and war. It is really a quite powerful story, dulled down at times by the author's seemingly ceaseless wonder, but for a tale marketed as being about a white European lost in the maze of turn-of-the-century India, there is a great deal that is very contemporary and an enormous amount of action and even betrayal. Give it a go and read it to your kids. There are many valuable life lessons Kipling makes an attempt to teach and many wrong paths he explains to us all about taking.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A classic Raj era tale
A classic Raj era tale
Published on Oct 12 2003 by S. Dole
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