One of the most beautiful tales of friendship I have ever read, Kim is often described as Kipling’s love letter to India. At its centre is Kim, a young white boy, an orphan, and his friend and mentor the Tibetan Lama who takes Kim from the streets of Lahore to be educated at a public school in England and on to adventures. Set in an imperialistic world; a world strikingly masculine, dominated by travel, trade and adventure, a world in which there is no question of the division between white and non-white. The book is a celebration of their friendship in a beautiful but often hostile environment and Kim captures the opulence of India's exotic landscape, overlaid by the uneasy presence of the British Raj. This book is just unforgettable.
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| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
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Kim (1901) is a novel by Rudyard Kipling, a Nobel-Prize winning English writer who was born in India and whose novels often deal with Indian themes. The eponymous protagonist in Kim is the impecunious orphan of an Irish soldier who finds himself in the streets of the Indian city of Lahore in the late nineteenth century after having lost both parents. Kim gradually becomes completely integrated in the Indian society with the only obstacle being his physical conspicuousness. His life of vagrancy pushes him to master Indian customs and Indian specificities more than the natives themselves. He lives mainly on begging money at times and doing petty jobs at other times. Later, Kim meets a Lama, or a Tibetan religious leader, and becomes his follower and disciple. He goes with the Lama for adventurous trips until one day a Christian chaplain recognizes him as British, separates him from the Lama and sends him to school. After graduation from school, Kim is expected to join the British government in its war against Russians. He also meets the Lama again and a sort of juxtaposition is set between the project of the war known as the Great Game and the Buddhist spiritual quest. Kim has to choose between the two opposing paths.
Kim features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Classic fiction: general and literary, General Fiction, Fiction
Kim is available in Hardback, Paperback, Ebook
Kim was written by Rudyard Kipling and published by Copyright Group
£2.08
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