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 was stationed in India. Kim is a street boy growing up in Lahore and embarks on a great adventure with a Tibetian lama with whom Kim travels with on the Grand Trunk Road. He believes in destiny and had always heard the prophecy of a “red Bull on a green field” that awaits him.

After a fortuitous run-in with his late father’s former company, he is schooled and eventually becomes a spy in the Great Game between Russia and Britain for control of colonial India. A bit difficult to fully appreciate this story with its very dated characters like the comical Babu, the Afghani horse trader Mahub Ali, and the references to the oddities of the various religions of the day, but the story was colorful and charming in parts.