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    Kim
    Kim
    Kim
    Audiobook10 hours

    Kim

    Written by Rudyard Kipling

    Narrated by Simon Vance

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    "In all India is no one so alone as I!"

    Rudyard Kipling's Kim is the story of Kimball O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, who spends his childhood as a vagabond in Lahore. With an old Tibetan lama he travels through India, enthralled by the "roaring whirl" of the landscape and cities of richly colored bazaars and immense diversity of people.

    The novel is a masterpiece of careful organization and skillfully manipulated narrative techniques. By portraying Kim's utter devotion to the lama and his ability to share the life of the common people intimately and unself-consciously, Kipling creates a vision of harmony-and of India-that unites the secular and the spiritual, the life of action with that of contemplation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 3, 2010
    ISBN9781400185672
    Author

    Rudyard Kipling

    Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865. After intermittently moving between India and England during his early life, he settled in the latter in 1889, published his novel The Light That Failed in 1891 and married Caroline (Carrie) Balestier the following year. They returned to her home in Brattleboro, Vermont, where Kipling wrote both The Jungle Book and its sequel, as well as Captains Courageous. He continued to write prolifically and was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 but his later years were darkened by the death of his son John at the Battle of Loos in 1915. He died in 1936.

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    Reviews for Kim

    4/5

    62 ratings61 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A wonderful and ambitious story: a Bildungsroman, a travelogue, a spy adventure. Definitely marred by Kipling's belief in the magical wonderfulness of the British Empire and evident sexism, but filled with lovely details, excitement, and humour.Far more polished and interesting than his Jungle Book stories, containing many fewer Kipling literary tics.
    • 5/5
      This is a magnificent book that needs to be listened to in audio book form so as to get the real flavor.This edition has for the reader:Ralph Cosham; excellent!!!5 Stars.
    • 5/5
      A grand adventure, good reading about Colonialism and India.
    • 5/5
      [Kim] by [[Rudyard Kipling]] I first read this book about 40 years ago in my teens. I found it confusing and hard to understand: Kipling used dialect and a lot of Indian and British vocabulary. I also was more focused on plot than the descriptive sections.Forty years later I read it again and thought it was one of the best books I've read all year. It is a "coming of age" yarn, with deep background on British ruled India, the relationships between various Indian cultures, and the ruling British. For the 21st century American reader, what is striking about Kim's tale is how little material benefits are considered valuable; rather, it is the quality of one's work that is prized by the British and the Indians alike. There is no political correctness in the book: various cultures strengths and weaknesses are depicted and the English do not come out as the most noble of the group. That is all background. For the plot, Kim, an Irish solder's orphan (Kimball O'Hara), lives on the streets of India, passing as a Indian. What may be missed by Americans is that at the time, this was rather counter cultural of Kipling to make the hero an Irish lad. Kim's nickname is "Friend of All the World", for he befriends all, but is taken in by none. Then he gets involved in intelligence work with the British foreign service while accompanying an aged Tibetan lama.By all means read this book, and enjoy it.
    • 4/5
      An adventurous buddy/road tale set in the teeming infinitude of colonial India. I was worried about it being ruined by Kipling’s colonialist paternalism, but it seems like, while in his head he was an imperialist, his heart was with the colonized. Beautifully and expansively told and described.
    • 5/5
      One of my very favorite books, hands down. It never fails to leave me choked up when I reach the end.
    • 3/5
      The strongest impressions I got from this novel were vivid descriptions of India and the wide variety of people who lived in there in the late 19th century. Told from the perspective of Kim, an orphan of Irish descent on his own in this vast land, he quickly embarks on an adventure by joining a holy man, a lama, as his disciple, and traveling through a diverse landscape. This book is good reading for anyone interested in British India.
    • 3/5
      Kim is the classic tale of a young orphan boy who grows up in the streets of colonial India. Although Kim survives as a street urchin, he is the son of an Irish officer and is a mishmash of his British ancestry and his Indian upbringing. Throughout this book, Kim is torn between his two nationalities. Once it is discovered that he is a white English boy, he is sent to school to be educated and eventually become part of the 'Great Game' or the espionage plot between England and the other European power houses. At the same time, Kim meets a Tibetan Lama and wants to accompany him as his servant on his quest for enlightenment. Kim is miraculously able to do both and his travels take him through much of India and the Himalayas.

      The descriptions of Colonial India were the best part of this book. Definitely, it was a crossroads for many cultures that all seemed to work well together and coexist peacefully. Also, the amazing friendship that Kim develops with the old Tibetan Lama was sweet and touching. But, this book is on quite a few of the notable 'books you MUST read' lists including, 1001 Books to Read Before You Die, Modern Library and the Radcliffe List. For me the book was sweet and even memorable, but not quite earth shattering.
    • 2/5
      Kipling was a very popular author during his life (1865-1936), and Kim (1901) was arguably written at the peak of his career. It tells the story of an orphaned son of an Irish soldier traveling through India, and Kipling was certainly experienced enough to write the tale, having lived there from 1882 to 1889. As the introduction to this volume says, “Kipling’s view of life is a deeply pessimistic one. Not only is man, as he once put it, at war with his surroundings in a world that does not care, but that world itself is without intrinsic order: chaos and anarchy constitute its true moral reality.” What better place for this worldview than India, with its harshness, diversity, and chaos. In the story, Kim meets an aged lama and becomes his disciple, and throughout the book there is a duality between Kim’s humanistic love with the lama spiritual love. The fundamental message Kipling imparts to us is that this duality can never be “resolved” and will always exist. The novel takes place during what is referred to as “The Great Game”, that is, the political conflict between Russia and Britain in Central Asia at this time, and there is a similar “earthly” duality between this tension and the better instincts of humanity that is also shown to be unending. Today Kipling stands for the imperialism of the age and he’s controversial today for having written “The White Man’s Burden” (ugh) two years earlier, but it is not for that Kim didn’t resonate with me. Kim was “ok” as an adventure story, “ok” as a cultural study of India, and “ok” relative to insights into spirituality or the human condition … but not strong enough at any of these for me to recommend it. I think it’s a bit overrated.Quotes:On religion:"Thou art beyond question an unbeliever, and therefore thou wilt be damned. So says my Law - or I think it does. But thou art also my Little Friend of all the World, and I love thee. So says my heart. This matter of creeds is like horseflesh. The wise man knows horses are good - that there is a profit to be made from all; and for myself - but that I am a good Sunni and hate the men of Tira - I could believe the same of all the Faiths.”“Bennett looked at him with the triple-ringed uninterest of the creed that lumps nine-tenths of the world under the title of ‘heathen’.”On eating, and different cultures:“Certain things are not known to those who eat with forks. It is better to eat with both hands for a while. Speak soft words to those who do not understand this…”
    • 3/5
      A boyish adventure: Kim, the son of an Irish soldier, is orphaned in India and brought up by an Indian foster mother of dubious moral standing, left only with his father’s army papers (which he cannot read) and an assurance which he cannot understand but takes for a prophecy, relating to the return of the regiment and the help it would bring. He is therefore a Sahib, but brought up as a Hindu and well-versed in all the street wisdom of the bazaar. He takes up with a Tibetan lama on pilgrimage and leaves to travel the country. They come across the regiment and Kim is taken up to be educated as a Sahib, finally joining a secret service whose aims he does not understand or particularly care about, interested only in spying as a great Game. Blah blah.It's well written - just a bit blokey for my tastes.
    • 5/5
      Published in 1901, Kim by Rudyard Kipling has rightly become a beloved classic over the years. Possessing all the ingredients needed for a grand adventure story, this tale goes a step further with it’s wondrous descriptive writing and it’s close look at the India Kipling knew so well. To this is added well defined and interesting characters and a bitter-sweet coming of age plot line. The story revolves around Kimball O’Hara who, at the beginning of the story, is living as a native orphan on the streets of Lahore. He meets and makes an instant connection with a wandering lama from Tibet. Together they embark upon a journey, both spiritual and actual. Travelling the crowded rails and dusty roads of India, meeting many interesting people along the way. Kim becomes the lamas disciple or “chela” and his love and respect for the older man grows. That these feelings are returned is obvious as well. Eventually Kim meets up with a company of soldiers from his father’s Irish Regiment who take him under their wing. With his ability to blend into the native population, he soon finds himself involved in “The Great Game” as a British agent. High adventure indeed, but for me it was the detailed descriptions of India, the sights, the smells and the people that made this book special. From the crowded marketplace to the dusty plains, Kipling’s colourful writing brings India to life. Kim is a book that I can see reading over and over again as I believe every read would give you a different perspective. Truly a classic.
    • 5/5
      As enchanting as I remembered, and given his attitudes toward the British Empire, surprisingly open-minded about India and its inhabitants. Unlike some writers who just trafficked in exoticism and Orientalism, Kipling took the time to flesh out his native characters (who are often more clued-in than several of the supercilious but supremely ignorant Westerners). Kim is a wonderful creation, curious, cheeky and savvy beyond his years, and I loved joining him on his adventures throughout a country I know too little about. I'm glad Kipling didn't write more Kim stories, as it might have diluted the uniqueness of this one -- but I'm also sorry he didn't, because I wasn't ready for it to end!
    • 4/5
      The novel "Kim" is unique in the English literary canon: the only novel by a significant British author that features India as its setting at a time when the British Raj was still flourishing. We're lucky to have this product of Rudyard Kipling's in-depth knowledge of life in India, a knowledge acquired thanks to his upbringing. Kipling was born in India and raised there, son of a British curator stationed at the Lahore museum (his father makes a cameo appearance in the novel's first chapter.) Authors to follow would turn a critical eye on the Raj in hindsight (e.g. "A Passage to India"). By comparison this one (and Kipling in general) is sometimes argued as endorsing imperialism. To the extent this is true, it is only for the lack of that criticism. The author's love and respect for the nation of his birth and its peoples shines from every page. I enjoyed the characters, especially Kim and the wise but fumbling Buddhist lama whom he adores. Kim matures about halfway through, at which point the novel loses some of its charm - I preferred the irascible child to the confident teenager - but there are still moments to treasure and Kim remains the same boy at heart. Mahbub Ali and Hurree Babu are also standouts. The British characters are the least interesting, except for Lurgan who seems to be a practiced magician of some sort. I'm still not certain what's taking place in the scene concerning the broken jar. Is it an illusion, hypnotism ...?I also appreciated the 'peaceful coexistence' portrayal of India's wealth of diverse religions and peoples. Among the fourth chapter's descriptions of the Grand Trunk Road, there are people stopping to "make a prayer before one of the wayside shrines - sometimes Hindu, sometimes Mussalman - which the low caste of both creeds share with beautiful impartiality." It's refreshing to see religious diversity being extolled and maintained as a background element rather than made the source of a story's conflict."Kim" is sometimes taken for a children's novel for its simple plotting, light theme, and featuring a youth as protagonist. Our own children might enjoy the exploits of street-smart Kim (especially his sharp tongue), but I think it requires an adult's perspective to best appreciate the setting's portrayal.
    • 5/5
      Extraordinary, a beautiful, rich, moving story of a boy coming of age in British India. I had heard so much of what it was (Imperialist etc) and that is just not so. It is more a Buddhist book than an imperialist and the heart of it is the love between the Red Lama and the the orphan. The picture of India is drawn with passion and love and the richness of the people and life is contrasted often with the inadequacy of some of the British. I see echoes of Kim in many of my favourite books - look at the Shasta in the Horse and His Boy, at Lyra in His Dark Materials, at John Buchann's Sandy Arbuthnot and in real life at Lawrence of Arabia... And although the adventure and spy story drive the narrative the long trip into the himmalayas is a spiritual quest the culmination of the book one of spiritual fulfilment (and something of the feel of the last chapters of Lord of the Rings also) Highly recommended! (Oddly many of my friends said they were made to read it in Scouts - and it's full of what these days would be called strong language, violence, drug use and sexual references - go Kipling!)
    • 5/5
      I started this as an e-book and couldn't wait to get a print copy. Kim, short for Kimball O'Hara, is an Irish orphan in India during the Raj who gets up to all sorts of mischief until he meets a holy man, a lama from Tibet. He continues to get up to mischief but his adventures take him out across India, to school, and into contact with all sorts of interesting characters. It's an excellent story and was one of the many books that inspired Baden Powell as he started the Boy Scout movement. The issues relating to religion and caste would be good to discuss with younger (12 and under) readers.
    • 3/5
      I know a lot of people really like this book, but for some reason I have never been able to make it through the whole thing. I read a little bit and then lose interest. Maybe someday I will give it another try.
    • 4/5
      Perhaps the very core novel of imperialism, widely considered Kipling's masterpiece. For my own part, I was never entirely caught by this difficult merger of 2 genres later considered quite separate: the novel of personal or spiritual development, & the espionage novel. The pure espionage parts however, adding up to about 1/3 of the book, are lively, fresh, in every way original. The ending, which unites & transcends the 2 genres, remains a stroke of genius & skill.
    • 1/5
      Oh dear. I tried really really hard to stay with the plot, but it was like being sucked under the water by an extra strong current, and drowning. I just couldn't stay with it, and ended up skimming the last quarter.
    • 5/5
      "must" reading for anyone living in 2007. Besides the wonderful content, there is Kipling's minimal style, which I love: beautifully crafted sentences with something left for the reader to put in.
    • 4/5
      Kim O'Hara is an orphan, living in the streets of Lahore, India like countless other unfortunate children. So dark is his skin from his prolonged exposure to the elements, that he has no notion at all that he is a 'sahib', a term used to designate a white man. He meets an elderly Buddhist monk who is on a mission to find the mythical river that has sprouted at the place where Buddha's arrow struck long ago, and Kim decides he must accompany the man and be his disciple, so he can beg for food for and shelter for the frail sage. Kim has his own destiny to fulfill: he must find a red bull in a green field, which will reveal to him great truths. And so the young boy and the old man embark on a long journey together that will take Kim from childhood to the life of an educated young man who is of great use as an agent of the British army, which seeks to keep a firm grasp on it's colonies with the use of spies as on of it's weapons. There are many sympathetic characters along the journey and it's a gripping adventure. But though our protagonist goes through a fascinating journey, I failed to be fully drawn into this story, as in the back of my mind there remained the insistent thought that through it all, Kippling might be upholding colonialism as an ideal and I often wondered whether the author considered the natives in the story fully as human beings or was rather parodying regional stereotypes. For example, with the Buddhist sage's continual references to 'The Way' and 'The Wheel', which must have seemed novel ideas to a Western readership at the beginning of the 20th century, was Kippling simply trying to teach Eastern Philosophy to his readers, or was he using the man's constant proselytizing in mockery? This is a book which would probably profit from a group reading to allow the opportunity for discussion on these matters.
    • 3/5
      You can almost smell the spices of India. Wonderfully descriptive and exotically native.
    • 4/5
      Kipling is a controversial author these days, seen as an unapologetic imperialist booster of the British Empire and even racist. Yet Indian authors such as Arundhati Roy, V.S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie have found Kipling impressive and even influential. Kipling can be a wonderful storyteller. Rushdie has said Kipling's writing has "the power simultaneously to infuriate and to entrance." I found that the case in both The Jungle Books and now Kim. And yes, you can see a, shall we say, very un-PC sensibility there, but my overall impression was Kipling's great love for India, which he knew intimately:The diamond-bright dawn woke men and crows and bullocks together. Kim sat up and yawned, shook himself, and thrilled with delight. This was seeing the world in real truth; this was life as he would have it - bustling and shouting, the buckling of belts, and beating of bullocks and creaking of wheels, lighting of fires and cooking of food, and new sights at every turn of the approving eye. The morning mist swept off in a whorl of silver, the parrots shot away to some distant river in shrieking green hosts: all the well-wheels within ear-shot went to work. India was awake, and Kim was in the middle of it.Kim is an orphan who was born Kimball O'Hara, the son of an Irishman who served as a sergeant in the British Army in India. He grows up in the streets of Lahore in the Punjab, where he is known as "the Little Friend of the World" and more fluent in the languages of India than English. If there's one indelible impression the book makes, it's in how it depicts the richness and diversity of India, with so many different languages, ethnicities and faiths. And in this book at least, the Indians and Asians certainly do not come across as stereotypes and those Europeans who refuse to learn from them are scorned. Kim also is about the "Great Game" of espionage and a coming of age adventure story about an unforgettable character not yet seventeen at the end of the book. I certainly can see traces of Kim in books as diverse as Robert Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy and Kaye's The Far Pavilions. This was a completely absorbing read.
    • 5/5
      A great story about British India. A book like this deserves to be called a classic. The plot involves, Kim, an orphaned boy in Lahore who meets with amazing adventures after falling in with a Tibetan lama in search of a mystical river.
    • 4/5
      My first book of 2014! This was 3.5 stars. So. Kim is an orphan who has survived quite well on the streets of Lahore. He ends up a disciple to a kindly old Tibetan lama who is on a spiritual quest to find the river that will cleanse him of his sins. HOWEVER, Kim is also friends with a Muslim horse trader who also happens to be a spy for the British and he recruits Kim to do some work for him which eventually results in Kim's true Sahib-ness being discovered -- Kim is actually Kimball O'Hara. Kim is sent away to a school for English boys (paid for by his lama) and the British decide to use Kim's street smarts and natural intelligence to become an agent in The Great Game. Which sounds way more exciting than what it actually is -- some kind of beef between England and Russia for domination in Central Asia. Oh, imperialism. Kim goes on many adventures along India and meets lots of people, thus making Kim notable for its diverse portrait of the people, culture, regions, and religions of India. Which would be wonderful except that I am an ignorant dummy: I have some basic and hazy concepts of Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Bengalis, Jains, people from the hill vs. the plains, Lahore vs. Bombay, etc. but I think I missed some of those nuances that, in part, makes the book so enjoyable. I really did like Kim: he was smart, loyal, and endearingly lovely to and protective of his lama. Reading about a teenager being kind and respectful to an elderly person is a nice change, even if it's only fiction. Kim is not exactly introspective, but he definitely changes over the course of the novel -- he starts off as a street smart, independent 13 year old orphan living on the streets and ends the novel as a 17 year old British spy with a father figure who loves and cares for him. Oh, and I also love Hurree and Muhbub Ali. Happy endings!
    • 3/5
      This was a very slow read for me and a tough one. I don't usually have trouble with the language in classic novels but did with for some reason. It was tough to get into but I persevered and around the middle of the book I reached the point where I was finally enjoying it.
    • 5/5
      Poor Kim. Like author Kipling, the boy Kim is torn between East and West. As a young orphan, Kim befriends a lama who is on a quest for the River of the Arrow, which will cleanse him of his sins and help him attain enlightenment. Very soon Kim becomes completely devoted to the Teshoo Lama, will follow him anywhere, serving the Lama as his chela, or disciple. Kim’s love for this man is complete and touching. And the Lama’s love for Kim is equally strong.Meanwhile, though, Kim has come to the attention of the British governmental spy system. They’re eager to exploit the boy’s amazing talent in languages, his ability to adopt the manners and dress of any one of the many cultures in India, his outstanding memory and mental strength, and his desire for adventure. In a slightly complicated plot line, Kim is sent to a British school, learns surveying, and, at 17, is sent on a dangerous and important mission.Kim’s continued devotion to his Lama, his bravery and cleverness, and his sense of fun all work together to make him beloved by many of the men who oversee his education, bookish and otherwise.But. Has it all been too much weight for his slim shoulders? Does he have a nervous collapse, perhaps made worse by dengue fever? And what will Kim make of his adult life? He accomplishes his mission, but takes a long time to recover, physically and emotionally, from the strain.The reader is given a tiny glimpse that all may not go well for Kim. And yet it might. I loved this book when I first read it, and I love it still today. I do have one response to those who say Kipling indulges in stereotyping here, citing the character of Babu. Babu is often afraid, and is the only character who admits to that. And yet he risks his life and the acute possibility of torture, both to accomplish British aims and to save Kim and the Lama. I would argue that he’s a true hero: smart enough to be afraid, but brave and loyal enough to overcome those very real fears and do what he sees as the right thing, and his duty.
    • 1/5
      boring book o stars i did not like it
      s
    • 2/5
      Rudyard Kipling schildert die Geschichte des in den Slums von Lahore aufwachsenden irischen Waisenjungen Kimball O'Hara. Die Abenteuer des namensgebenden Hauptprotagonisten sind so vielfältig und bunt, wie der indische Subkontinent selbst. Im Vordergrund steht die Beziehung Kims zu einem tibetischen Lama und seine Verwicklungen ins "Große Spiel", dem Ringen zwischen Großbritannien und Russland um die Vorherrschaft in Zentralasien im 19. Jahrhundert.Doch gerade in dieser Vielfalt liegt auch die große Schwäche des Romans: Kipling vertändelt sich in Details, schwenkt sprunghaft von einem Abenteuer ins nächste und opfert seinem Erzähldrang Struktur und Handlungsstrang. Zudem deutet Kipling sehr viel bloß an, insbesondere jene Dinge, die mit "The Great Game" zu tun haben. Man muss sich schon in der Geschichte Zentralasien gut auskennen, um das Buch tatsächlich zu verstehen. Von der Kritik ausnehmen kann man diesbezüglich auch die vorliegende Ausgabe nicht: Zwar beinhaltet die Ausgabe einen umfangreichen Anhang samt Erläuterungen, doch diese selbst sind phasenweise rätselhaft und unvollständig. Andere indische Originalausdrücke wiederrum bleiben überhaupt unkommentiert oder werden lieblos in eckigen Klammerausdrücken im Fließtext erklärt.
    • 5/5
      Kim is another of those books that comes with a great deal of baggage: some of it reasonable, some not. It would be great to be able to say simply "this is a great adventure story" and enjoy it on its own terms, but I think the reader has to be aware of at least some of the assumptions Kipling is asking us to make about the world. Penguin clearly don't want us to enjoy the book at all, as their Penguin Modern Classics edition comes with a rather depressing introductory essay and some tediously pedantic notes by the late Edward Said.Is it a great spy story? I don't think so - although I heard Dame Stella Rimington, who may be presumed to know a thing or two about spying in India, talking it up as such on the BBC the other day. Whilst Kim's training with Lurgan Sahib is plausible, Kim's big success against the French and Russian agents is a direct consequence of their incompetence - if they'd taken any sensible precautions against counter-espionage at all, Kim and his friends would never have been able to foil their dastardly plans. Some of the tradecraft Kim is taught seems a bit suspect too - what intelligence organisation would be daft enough to give all of its agents a common recognition signal? One traitor would be enough to blow the whole organisation.Is it a handbook for military adventures on the North-West frontier? If that's how it is being used, it might explain the current lack of progress of NATO forces in Afghanistan. Anyone who's read Peter Hopkirk's books knows that by the time Kim was written, the danger of Russian incursions into India and Afghanistan, if it ever existed, was long past. There was, as there always has been, unrest among some of the Muslim communities in the area, but Kipling doesn't tell us anything about that. Kipling's view of the Great Game is a fantasy, and probably has more to do with the costly and unsuccessful colonial war of the moment (South Africa) than with India.Is it a primer in basic Buddhism? Probably not. There is no coherent explanation of what Buddhists actually believe, or why. We do get glimpses of the way the lama's religious beliefs help him to deal with concrete situations, but we are led to attribute his qualities to his own strength of character, as much as to his Buddhism. He is really a kind of generic holy man - he would be just as plausible if he were a Baptist or a Benedictine.Is it imperialist? Yes, of course it is. Kipling was firmly convinced that it was the duty of the British to run India, because he felt that they could do a better job than anyone else. This was a minority view (especially in Britain itself), but it was considered a perfectly respectable political standpoint at the time, and Kipling at least had some experience of the realities of colonial India from his time as a journalist. Said is right, of course, to draw attention to the way that Kipling selectively shows us Indians who support the British Raj, and ignores other viewpoints.Is it racist? Certainly, although the passages Said draws attention to are mostly just evidence of a failure to distinguish between racial and cultural characteristics, which is common to most writers of the period. Kipling compensates for this laziness to a large extent by the way the two most important Indian characters, Mahbub Ali and the Babu, are drawn as individuals who transcend racial stereotypes (in fact, both of them are conscious of the way Europeans stereotype them, and exploit this perception for their own ends). However, in the case of Kim, we have someone who as grown up to all intents and purposes in an Indian cultural environment, having lost his European parents at a very young age, but who nevertheless has a special destiny because of his racial origins. I don't think we can absolve Kipling of racism on this point: on the other hand, it is an assumption Kipling pushes so far into the foreground that I don't see how any modern reader of the book could fail to be conscious of it: it's simply a point that we have to accept as one of the underlying assumptions of the book. Is it a great novel? Yes, of course! Kipling wasn't very successful with the novel in general, but this is the one place where he produced a full length novel that can stand up with the best of them. Interestingly, Said chooses to compare Kim side-by-side not with other adventure stories, but with Hardy's Jude the obscure, making the point that most novels of the period were about frustrated hopes and ambitions, but that the freedom of movement offered by a colonial setting allowed Kipling to write a novel about possibilities seized and opportunities exploited. Hardy can be put side-by-side with Kipling in other ways too: both were fascinated by the voices of ordinary working people, and produced rich, if idealised, views of traditional societies confronted by the modern age. You can certainly imagine Mahbub Ali the horse trader doing business with Michael Henchard the corn merchant. It's probably not a huge exaggeration to say that Hardy's rural Wessex would have been as remote and exotic as Kipling's India to the average urban middle-class reader in 1901.
    • 4/5
      I am pretty sure I didn't understand this book, but I still enjoyed it.

      I enjoyed the journey on foot and by rail through India, a country I find intriguing but way too scary to actually visit. And anyway, I won't ever be able to visit this particular India since this one existed what, 150 years ago or so?

      I enjoyed the interactions of the many different cultures in the book. Multiple religions and ethnic backgrounds and languages all met at different points along the road, and Kipling really made these differences come alive in a way that allowed me to see the person underneath. I never really had a sense for how mixed the population of India is (or perhaps just was? I don't know how different Kipling's India is from India of the 21st century). Kipling lets us see inside the characters through direct access to their thoughts and through often hilarious asides and sarcastic remarks in other languages.

      I especially enjoyed the developing relationship between Kim and the lama as the orphan boy grows to trust and to love the holy man. This development seems to mirror the way that going through the outward motions of a spiritual practice eventually leads to internal change. Their relationship develops alongside the spiritual journey, and both involve themes of sacrifice and of bearing burdens for the sake of love.

      There is in this novel an element of trust that I also find in narratives of long foot journeys set in the United States, like those along the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail. No matter where they went, Kim and the lama trusted that what they needed would be provided, and it was, if not always in the way they originally expected. I find the freedom in that perspective compelling.

      One of my favorite passages:

      "And so [the lama] petted and comforted Kim with wise saws and grave texts on that little understood beast, our body, who, being but a delusion, insists on posing as the soul, to the darkening of the Way, and the immense multiplication of unnecessary evils." (p 334)

      Kim can blend in, chameleon-like, in almost any situation. He studies others closely and is a natural at trying on different personalities, classes, and ethnicities. This opens up some interesting career options, but it also highlights this idea of the body being an illusion. The lama fasts and meditates in an attempt to liberate himself from his body in the traditional Buddhist way, but Kim dips in and out of different identities, and in this way frees himself from his body and finds his soul.

      My nine-year-old and I read this book aloud together, and I think it was a combination of her persistent nature and the interesting and amusing little bits Kipling works into the novel that enabled her to stick with it chapter by chapter each evening. (She also enjoyed trying to trace Kim and the lama's travels in our atlas, which was difficult at times because the spellings of the city names in the atlas were often different from those in the novel.) Accepting that we didn't understand what was going on sometimes and just trusting that something resembling understanding would come eventually, we trucked along. We both got something different out of this book, but I think we both enjoyed it.