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 |
| Other Genres: |
Kim (1901) is one of Kipling's masterpieces. Through the story of the young orphan Kimball O'Hara, and his vocation in the Secret Service, Kipling presents a vivid picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the bazaars and the road. Two men - Kim, a boy growing into early manhood and the lama, an old ascetic priest - are fired by a quest. While Kim plays the Great Game, the Intelligence-led rivalry with Russia's expansionist ambitions in the north, he is also spiritually bound to the lama and he tries to reconcile these opposing strands, while the lama searches for redemption from the Wheel of Life.
With an Afterword by David Stuart Davies.
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 Macmillan Collector's Library an imprint of Macmillan
Kim has 404 pages