Kim
Kipling’s well-known tale of India functions Kimball O’Hara, an Irish orphan raised in India. Soon after travelling with a Tibetan lama, Kim is sent to college, but continues to travel with the lama and aids the English Secret Service. The novel is especially well-loved for its depictions of India.1 of the specific pleasures of reading Kim is the full variety of emotion, understanding, and encounter that Rudyard Kipling gives his complex hero. Kim O’Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier stationed in India, is neither innocent nor victimized. Raised by an opium-addicted half-caste woman considering that his equally dissolute father’s death, the boy has grown up in the streets of Lahore:
Even though he was burned black as any native although he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mom-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song although he consorted on terms of best equality with the tiny boys of the bazar Kim was white–a poor white of the extremely poorest.
From his father and the girl who raised him, Kim has come to believe that a fantastic destiny awaits him. The details, nevertheless, 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 little one gone native, mixed with his “love of the game for its personal sake,” makes him uniquely suited for a greater game. And when, at final, the lengthy-awaited colonel comes along, Kim is recruited as a spy in Britain’s struggle to keep its colonial grip on India. Kipling was, very 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 individuals is remarkably sympathetic. Yes, there is the stereotypical Westernized Indian Babu Huree Chander with his atrocious English, but there is also Kim’s pal 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 very good yarn to the degree of a timeless traditional. –Alix Wilber
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A ‘Best Kept Secret’ of literature,
‘Kim’ is a work that could receive very different reviews depending on the biases of the reviewer.
Any professor from the English department of my alma mater (Rutgers) would insist that ‘Kim’ should never under any circumstances receive any praise as it is racist, glorifies imperialism, was writen by a dead white male, and lacks a political philosophy acceptable to a modern progressive liberal. Well, I suppose that it lacks any real political philosophy (except some very general complimentary comments about democracy) and Rudyard Kipling is dead, white and male, but the first two comments are completely wrong and and this sort of review is the voice of ignorance.
A staunch traditionalist, conservative would insist that it is a canonical work that should be read by every school child as a superior example of English literature and the epitomy of the written Enlish language. This is equally ill-informed and ill-considered.
‘Kim’ is a wonderful story of an orphan in India (the part that is now Pakistan; Abid-please consider it a gesture of respect that I mention the change in geography) in the late 1800s. Kim is the son of an Irish soldier raised by locals, familiar with the customs and languages of the Hindus and Muslims of the area who gets recruited by the British to spy for them. Kim acts as a guide for a Tibetan Buddhist priest who is on a quest in India, broadening his knowledge of the cultures of his world and giving him an excuse to travel even further. He comes upon his father’s regiment, and the officers of the regiment arrange for Kim to attend a ‘proper’ British school. Throughout the story, a British spymaster is helping Kim receive an education (both formal and in the skills needed to serve the British rule in India) and arranging for Kim to carry messages and run small but important tasks for him.
Throughout the book, the only Indian group that is treated with disrespect is Hindus who have sacrificed their own culture’s customs in order to get ahead in the British goverment. Frequently, the low opinion of the British held by the Indians (Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist) is mentioned, and is usually pretty funny. The other European powers that are mention in the book are not treated with respect, but that is understandable (at least to me in context; other readers will have to make up their own minds).
Kipling’s passion for the land he was raised in and his love for the peoples he was raised with is unmistakable, as is his love/hate relationship with the British government (N.B. he was not knighted in a time when most prominent authors were; he was entirely too candid about the British rule in India and the Crown’s treatment of her soldiers). The language of the book is a little hard to follow, between regional loan words and the English of the time, but a patient and persistant reader will find the effort rewarded.
A great spy novel, read it for yourself and don’t trust the critics who speak based on assumptions rather than knowledge.
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|Simple conversion of public domain text.,
Review for Public Domain Books edition of Kim with ASIN: B000JQU7BM
This has been updated since I first reviewed this edition in April. Now upped to two-star.
Still no italics. Still straight quotes. Dashes are now proper dashes. It now has had the paragraphs correctly wrapped, and has a simple table of contents at the beginning (but not linked from the menu). The text is now from the later Project Gutenberg text, so it has the typos from that edition – e.g. pincers instead of pencase, instead of the earlier typos, e.g. “Thou Knobbiest” for “Thou Knowest”.
It’s not too bad for free. There are better free conversions not on Amazon, e.g. at Mobileread. And there are a few better conversions here on Amazon, that cost money. But beware of the many quick conversions on Amazon that are really no better than this free edition, but charge anything from $0.99 to $45.00!
If you’re looking for a Kindle edition of Kim, don’t just search for “Kim”. That only finds a few of the many editions. Search for “Kim Kipling” (without the quotes) to find the 30 or so editions available. And also look for my review “Kindle Edition Choice is critical” for a review of all the available editions as of May 2010.
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