Kim (Oxford World's Classics)

by Rudyard Kipling

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1222 ratings, 3.66 average rating, 147 reviews (more data...)

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published

September 17th 1998 (first published 1901) by Oxford University Press, USA

binding

Paperback, 352 pages

isbn

0192835130 (isbn13: 9780192835130)

description

One of the particular pleasures of reading Kim is the full range of emotion, knowledge, and experience that Rudyard Kipling gives his complex ...more

[close] One of the particular pleasures of reading Kim is the full range of emotion, knowledge, and experience 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 since his equally dissolute father's death, the boy has grown up in the streets of Lahore: <blockquote> Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim was white--a poor white of the very poorest. </blockquote> From his father and the woman who raised him, Kim has come to believe that a great destiny awaits him. The details, however, 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 child gone native, combined with his "love of the game for its own sake," makes him uniquely suited for a bigger game. And when, at last, the long-awaited colonel comes along, Kim is recruited as a spy in Britain's struggle to maintain its colonial grip on India. Kipling was, 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 people is remarkably sympathetic. Yes, there is the stereotypical Westernized Indian Babu Huree Chander with his atrocious English, but there is also Kim's friend 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 good yarn to the level of a timeless classic. --Alix Wilber [close]

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Laurie R. rated it:

(review of isbn 0140183523)

12/03/08

Kim served as inspiration for my novel "The Game", the seventh entry in the Mary Russell series. Feel free to come and join in the discussion, even if you come across this after December has passed--the discussion will remain open indefinitely for new thoughts and comments. Click for more information about the Virtual Book Club

Oh, this is suc...more Kim served as inspiration for my novel "The Game", the seventh entry in the Mary Russell series. Feel free to come and join in the discussion, even if you come across this after December has passed--the discussion will remain open indefinitely for new thoughts and comments. Click for more information about the Virtual Book Club

Oh, this is such a wonderful book. Coming-of-age tale and historical treatise; spy thriller and travel narrative; rousing adventure coupled with a sleek and subtle tale of the meeting of ancient traditions—and all of it told in a rotund and glorious English that would make Shakespeare feel right at home.
Read it aloud: "He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah…" The short patter of a two-word phrase: when used to open a book it is a vigorous and active statement, not some paired monosyllable made feeble by surrounding text. The phrase, tucked apart by the comma, is followed by the perfect juxtaposition of defiance and municipal orders: the mind's eye is immediately shown a small brown urchin facing down the cumbersome, pale, foreign tools of white authority. Then comes the drawn-out adverb astride: a mere eight words into the story, and we receive our first intimation that this creature who sits will turn out to straddle much more than the barrel of a big gun. And then the personification of that gun, Zam-Zammah, a name that fills the mouth from teeth to soft palate.

Prose that swells the chest and engages the mind. And I'll bet the bastard didn't even fiddle endlessly with that line in order to get it right.

Rudyard Kipling breathed the air of India for his formative years. He was an Englishman, who never doubted the superiority of the British way of life, or of the British person. And yet, Kim is infused with the opposite, the native's good-humored willingness to go along with the Sahib because after all, the poor white man needs to think himself superior, and it doesn't hurt to permit him, does it?

Thus, Kipling's characters are both caricature and fully realized individuals: his Babu is every upstart Bengali who came up against the Raj and failed, although not quite utterly—and his Babu is a man with enough stout self-regard to play the role of an upstart Bengali who came up against the Raj and failed, because that role is a most useful disguise when dealing with men of the West, who see the world in two dimensions.

Kim is both easy to read and hard to digest. Kipling's world view was that of the English Imperialist, with Victoria on the throne and God in His place. I don't know that I would call Kim a "profoundly embarrassing" novel, <Literature study online but it does without a doubt open a rich vein of discussion on colonial responsibilities, just as Mark Twain's novels open up discussions on American racism.

Anyone interested in the background of the story, particularly the real life paradigms for Lurgan Sahib and Colonel Creighton, would do well to look at Peter Hopkirk's excellent Quest for Kim. It will have you eyeing the cost of travel to Simla…

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Ginnie rated it:

(review of isbn 1593081928)

05/31/08

bookshelves: culture, fiction, treasure

Kim is one of the few books that constantly delight me; it grows friendlier with each reading. I love the tone of the telling, the vividness of every minor character, the moving friendship between the Lama in search of a river and the boy in search of himself. I never want their pilgrimage to end.

In Kim, everything is a given from the very beginning: the inquisitive nature of Kim, the mystery of his past and future, the Lama's quest, the fairy-tale atmosphere evoked by the me...more Kim is one of the few books that constantly delight me; it grows friendlier with each reading. I love the tone of the telling, the vividness of every minor character, the moving friendship between the Lama in search of a river and the boy in search of himself. I never want their pilgrimage to end.

In Kim, everything is a given from the very beginning: the inquisitive nature of Kim, the mystery of his past and future, the Lama's quest, the fairy-tale atmosphere evoked by the mention of Harun-al-Rachid and the Arabian Nights. There is no confusion or reluctance in the telling of the adventures, except when it becomes deliberately hesitant, to encourage the reader to complete on her own a scene or a dialogue. Otherwise, Kipling knows his story and trusts even its obviousness.

Among all the host of minor characters, none is as memorable to me as the old Indian lady whom Kim and his Lama meet on the Grand Trunk Road, who loves good food and gossip, and the thrill of new faces, and who chuckles "like a contented parrot above the sugar lump." She feels necessary to the story as do almost all of the minor characters. However I feel there is something artificial about the behavior of the European characters, something impersonal, aloof. But perhaps Kipling was catching a certain false note in the Anglo-Indian mentality. The military historian John Morris has noted, "The psychology of the Raj was really based on a lie. The majority of the British were acting a part. They weren't really the people they were supposed to be."

The end of Kim is an exuberant epiphany: Kim is made well and the Lama finds his river. His last gesture is to cross his hands and smile "as a man who has won Salvation for himself and his beloved."

We read what we want to read, not what the author wrote. In Don Quixote, I'm not particularly interested in the world of chivalry but in the ethics of its hero, and the curious friendship with Sancho. In The Wind in the Willows, I care far less about Mr. Toad than about Rat, Mole and Badger. In Kim I am not the least interested in the Great Game, all that infantile spy-story stuff, but I'm enthralled by Kim's and the Lama's respective quests and by the brilliance of the depiction of a world I don't know....less

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Steven rated it:

(review of isbn 0140183523)

02/08/08

bookshelves: 1001

Read in March, 2008

As referenced in previous reviews, some of the best novels that I have read are about a particular place. While I would not necessarily place this one within the pantheon, it is clearly the seminal work concerning life in turn of the century India. I was amazed with the rich and vivid descriptions of the setting and found myself intrigued enough in the plot to want to keep picking it up over and over.

The story concerns the life of Kim(ball) O’Hara, the orphaned son of a Irish soldier who...more

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