Kim

"It is time to take the Road again."Kim, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, brought up in the streets and bazaars of Lahore, befriends an elderly Tibetan Holy Man and decides to accompany him on his quest, across India, in search of a miraculous River of Healing.'On The Road' is a phrase which is carved onto one of the relief sculptures which John Lockwood Kipling produced to illustrate his son Rudyard's novel. And considered in one of its aspects, I suppose that 'Kim' is the first example of the twentieth-century 'road' novel, a form which would later became associated with Jack Kerouac, amongst others. The road in question is the Grand Trunk Road, along which Kim and his Tibetan Buddhist Lama make a significant part of their journey. There is also one sequence on this road where you don't have to read very far between the lines in order to realise that Kim is clearly 'stoned' on what Kipling calls 'a native-made cigarette' that he has managed to procure, or blag, along the way. He is a particularly knowing and resourceful little urchin, this one. And he is also something of an adept with changes of costume and make-up, enabling him to pass as a Hindu, Moslem or Buddhist boy, as occasion demands. In Kim's way of life, these are useful skills to have, but the more that he uses and develops them, the more they leave him with a nagging question about his own identity:"Who is Kim - Kim - Kim?"During the course of his journey, and the personal development which accompanies it, Kim is recruited by British Intelligence to work as an adolescent spy. And so he becomes drawn into the 'Great Game' of international politics which, in this particular instance, is being played out between Britain, the settled imperial power, and Russia - her aspirant rival for dominion of India. In Kim's capacity as a junior secret agent, he uses his status as disciple to a Buddhist Lama as his 'cover'. What remains deliberately opaque is precisely how much, or how little, Kim's Holy Man knows of his disciple's moonlighting for British intelligence. But there is more than one hint, both literal and symbolic, contained within the text to suggest that he might know a good deal more about it than he ever actually lets on, or explicitly says."...no hint is given except to those who know."In my view, Kim is the literary prototype for the later British spy novels of authors like Ian Fleming, as well as for the fictional 'teen spy' genre which has become so popular in our own time. These are aspects of Kipling's work which have been much imitated by later writers, though little commented upon by them and certainly never equalled in terms of literary merit.The central motif of 'Kim' is the Buddhist wheel of karma - of life, death and rebirth - and the first representation of it takes the form of the barrel of Zam-Zammah, the big gun around whose mouth revolve the forms of Kim and his two childhood playmates, Chota Lal and Abdullah; each one of them representing different religions, or 'ways'; each one of which has dominated India at different times of the past or, in Kim's case, the present; and each of whom has sat atop the gun's barrel in the pre-eminent position currently occupied by Kim, and therefore by 'the English'. The clear inference being that this present occupancy of the position will prove to be every bit as temporal as the others. After all, as Kim's Buddhist guru would no doubt remind us, the Wheel must turn."...sure is the Wheel, swerving not a hair."Written more than a century (and two world wars) ago, the novel still reads as though it had been written this morning. In essence, it hasn't dated at all. On the contrary, I think it has grown more universal and more relevant with the passage of time. Set within the context of India's teeming multi-faith millions, the novel actually feels as though it were taking place within a modern multicultural society. The book's mixture of Buddhist, Muslim, British and other influences must have seemed desperately exotic to millions of readers when it was first published, in 1901, but that same multicultural context is far more commonplace and universally experienced today."...Such-zen."When considered in what might be called its spiritual aspect, 'Kim' becomes the most transcendental and all-embracing of Kipling's work, although earlier stories by him also indicate his sympathies to this end. The novel demonstrates Kipling's respect for the varieties of religious experience in India, and it firmly flags up the possibility of harmony being established and maintained in the midst of religious and ethnic diversity. So do I think that Kim was a visionary work? Yes I do. I think that Kim was not only one of the first, but also one of the most far-seeing novels of the twentieth century.So far as the book's spiritual influences are concerned, by the end it is pretty clear that in its author's sympathies Buddhism finishes first, with Islam (in the person of Mahbub Ali) a very close second. Set a little farther back from these are the other Indian religions - Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism - plus the two branches of the western Christian religion which are represented, the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England.In my view, 'Kim' also draws to a grand conclusion Kipling's 'Indian period'. If 'The Jungle Books' represent the noontide sun of Kipling's talent, then 'Kim' is the golden, slanting sunlight of the later afternoon. In fact, no review of 'Kim' would be complete without mentioning that '...low-driving sunlight which makes luminous every detail in the picture of The Grand Trunk Road at eventide...' which Kipling remembered in his autobiography, 'Something of Myself', written more than thirty years later.It is worthwhile the reader knowing that the 'Woman of Shamlegh', who crops up towards the end of the novel, is also the 'Lisbeth' of Kipling's very first story from the collected 'Plain Tales from The Hills'. Although a person of some power and status in her native society, the Woman of Shamlegh's attempts to seduce Kim are doomed to failure, as much, if not more, for reasons tied up with her own past (for a full account of which you will have to read 'Plain Tales from the Hills') as for those to do with Kim's present and future.One of the novel's most interesting features is that the emphasis of the story appears to shift with each successive reading. It can be read as a 'road' novel, an adventure story, a spy yarn, a study of global politics (at that time), a spiritual journey, a coming-of-age tale and, ultimately, as a love story. Indeed, the novel ends upon the word 'beloved'.Note: This review relates to the 'Oxford World's Classics' edition which contains an Introduction by Alan Sandison, a chronology of Kipling's life and works, and Explanatory Notes for the Indian terms which the reader will encounter in the text.

This Oxford World's Classics edition of Kim is excellent value for money. The font is similar in size to other paperback editions. It has an introduction and endnotes explaining some of the less obvious words and allusions.What is Kim about? At one level it is about the Great Game, the contest to defend the Raj against real or imagined threats from Russia or other powers. However, there is more to it. It is about what we should value in life. Worldly achievement or moral values? It is about identity. Who is Kim? English or Indian?The book is a magnificent panorama of the landscape and peoples of Northern India before partition, as seen by Kipling in the 1880s. Kipling has a fascination with accents, voices, languages and wordplay and a delightful sense of humour, for example in the discussion at the end of Chapter 12. This is as much at the expense of the English as anyone else.The language of the dialogue is somewhat archaic (I assume to give the flavour of the Indian languages it is representing) so I would recommend combining the book with the fantastic Audible reading by Sam Dastor, who really brings it to life.Kim was published in 1901 and, unsurprisingly, reflects the views of that time. However, if you are prepared to read it historically rather than hysterically, as the introduction to this edition puts it, then it has a great deal to offer.It is interesting to read the near-contemporaneous evaluation of Kim by EM Forster (hardly a soulmate of Kipling) in a lecture of 1908: If Kipling had not been born in India "he would not have given us the greatest of all his books, Kim. Kim is Kipling. It is the one book that we must bear in mind when we are trying to estimate his genius, for it contains the spiritual standard by which all his developments must be measured." He concludes that most of Kipling's verse was "thrown off by the superficial layers of Kipling's mind, while Kim proceeds from the central core of it, that was quickened into life by India."

a captivating story of the adventures of an Irish boy, Kimball O' Hara growing up in imperial India, his love for the country and especially his love for his holyman Tishoo Llama as he pits his wits against the other great Imperial power, Russia.Marion in Hailey Oxfordshire

I first read this book as a set book for English Literature more than 40 years ago and loved it then. This edition is in the original 1905 Kipling 'speak' and I just loved the quality of the paper and the binding. It was an absolute steal for me in this format and will be retaining a place on my bookshelf as I'm sure I will read it again and again in the future.

This is a terrible text, it is so full of errors it is almost impossible to read. Paragraph indentations in the middle of sentences, numbers in place of letters, inexplicable formatting. Paper quality and pictures are good.