- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: P/B (1989)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140183523
- ISBN-13: 978-0140183528
- Product Dimensions: 19.9 x 13 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,177,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Collins Classics - Kim
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In this book Rudyard Kipling gave us a better understanding of nineteenth century India, as well as the first modern spy story. Kim, a young European lad becomes embroiled in the 'Great Game', where Britain and Russia were carrying out espionage against each other in India. With the luscious backdrop of India we are immersed in the lives of Kim and his allies and foes leading very beleivable lives as they carry out their missions. Forget James Bond, this isn't escapism, but real life. I have read this story many times and it has never bored me yet, there is just so much in it. Also it has helped me in reading history and in the activities of the 'Great Game'. Reading this book is a real treasure and something that you will want to come back to time and again.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The road story of the boy Kim and an aged redemption-seeking Lama told through the sights, sounds, characters, social structures and beliefs of British Imperial India, spiced up (unnecessarily, but enjoyably) with a spy yarn - compelling.
Kipling's devout love of all things Indian is written into every page and episode in this book, which is as much a travelogue as a piece of storytelling. It feels as if his real purpose was to share that devotion with his readers and, to hook them in, he cleverly bolted on a secondary plot about French and Russian spies in the sub-continent. To make these two elements work together Kipling created an unlikely pairing between the Teshoo Lama, abbot of the Himalayan Such-zen monastery who is in search of a miraculous river of redemption, and Kimball ("Kim) O'Hara, the son of a deceased Irish soldier who has pretty much grown up on the streets of Lahore and can pass for a native. Kim becomes the Lama's Chela (follower and pupil) as the Lama travels through India on his quest and this device enables the two to cover the country and meet the many and varied characters that fill it.
For me, that quest and their journey would have been enough as Kipling superbly captures the feel of India at that time; the heat, the smells, the dust, the food, countryside, railways, pilgrims, quacks, rich and poor are all explored along the way and between Kim's scampish youth and the Lama's respected holiness no doors are closed to them. This is a very deferential travelogue that treats India's cultures with reverence but simultaneously exposes the light and shade of its people. The contrast between the resourceful and down-to-earth Kim and the other worldly Lama makes for gentle comedy along the way. However Kipling obviously thought that a more conventional plot element was needed to draw in his readers and so causes Kim to be discovered by his father's old army regiment and, with the Lama's blessing, sent to school to learn to become a Sahib, except in the holidays when he again joins up with the holy man. As a quick-witted and persuasive scallywag, Kim comes to the attention of British Intelligence and is recruited as a junior spy in the Great Game of political intrigue between Britain and Russia played out in India's northern states.
The spy story is really pure macguffin and draws in a cast of shadowy ne'er do well characters - Mahbub Ali, a famous Pashtun horse trader and spy for the British, Colonel Creighton a British Army officer, ethnologist and spy, Lurgan Sahib a Simla gem trader and master spy and Hurree Chunder Mookherjee (The Babu) a Bengali intelligence operative working for the British and Kim's direct superior. Needless to say Kim manages to foil the bad guys but it's not all plain sailing emotionally or spiritually and Kipling leaves the reader nicely unsure as to whether his future lies with the Lama or the spies
There are accusations against Kipling that he promoted British imperial rule in India, or at least failed to condemn it in this work. I don't think he was trying to make a political point either way but simply describing the India he knew and loved, and that's a place which I very much enjoyed spending time in with this book.
Kipling's devout love of all things Indian is written into every page and episode in this book, which is as much a travelogue as a piece of storytelling. It feels as if his real purpose was to share that devotion with his readers and, to hook them in, he cleverly bolted on a secondary plot about French and Russian spies in the sub-continent. To make these two elements work together Kipling created an unlikely pairing between the Teshoo Lama, abbot of the Himalayan Such-zen monastery who is in search of a miraculous river of redemption, and Kimball ("Kim) O'Hara, the son of a deceased Irish soldier who has pretty much grown up on the streets of Lahore and can pass for a native. Kim becomes the Lama's Chela (follower and pupil) as the Lama travels through India on his quest and this device enables the two to cover the country and meet the many and varied characters that fill it.
For me, that quest and their journey would have been enough as Kipling superbly captures the feel of India at that time; the heat, the smells, the dust, the food, countryside, railways, pilgrims, quacks, rich and poor are all explored along the way and between Kim's scampish youth and the Lama's respected holiness no doors are closed to them. This is a very deferential travelogue that treats India's cultures with reverence but simultaneously exposes the light and shade of its people. The contrast between the resourceful and down-to-earth Kim and the other worldly Lama makes for gentle comedy along the way. However Kipling obviously thought that a more conventional plot element was needed to draw in his readers and so causes Kim to be discovered by his father's old army regiment and, with the Lama's blessing, sent to school to learn to become a Sahib, except in the holidays when he again joins up with the holy man. As a quick-witted and persuasive scallywag, Kim comes to the attention of British Intelligence and is recruited as a junior spy in the Great Game of political intrigue between Britain and Russia played out in India's northern states.
The spy story is really pure macguffin and draws in a cast of shadowy ne'er do well characters - Mahbub Ali, a famous Pashtun horse trader and spy for the British, Colonel Creighton a British Army officer, ethnologist and spy, Lurgan Sahib a Simla gem trader and master spy and Hurree Chunder Mookherjee (The Babu) a Bengali intelligence operative working for the British and Kim's direct superior. Needless to say Kim manages to foil the bad guys but it's not all plain sailing emotionally or spiritually and Kipling leaves the reader nicely unsure as to whether his future lies with the Lama or the spies
There are accusations against Kipling that he promoted British imperial rule in India, or at least failed to condemn it in this work. I don't think he was trying to make a political point either way but simply describing the India he knew and loved, and that's a place which I very much enjoyed spending time in with this book.
44 of 48 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
This review is for Collins Classics - Kim
Published by HarperPress
ASIN: B005D6W6DK
This is a review of this particular edition, not of Kim as a book.
This edition has quite a good text, although based on an early edition, without the later minor changes that Kipling made. But there are some odd errors in it: A space in the middle of a word (ador ation), extra characters at the end of a word (trunnionsbu) and occasionally an open quote that should be an apostrophe (``Tis). But at least it doesn't have the errors common in most of the other cheap editions.
It does have proper italics, typographic quotes and dashes. It even has the correct u-with-macron character (one of the few that do). Paragraphs all have a first line indent, even the first in a chapter. But the chapter verses and verse in the text is nicely done. According to the table of contents, it has some extras at the end, but no illustrations, and no extra annotations that I could see. Not too bad an edition, if it wasn't for the weird typos.
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 many editions available. And also look for my review "Kindle Edition Choice is critical" for a review of all the available UK editions as of January 2012. I can't give a live link to the mass review here, but its web address is: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R352D63HO69Y03/
Published by HarperPress
ASIN: B005D6W6DK
This is a review of this particular edition, not of Kim as a book.
This edition has quite a good text, although based on an early edition, without the later minor changes that Kipling made. But there are some odd errors in it: A space in the middle of a word (ador ation), extra characters at the end of a word (trunnionsbu) and occasionally an open quote that should be an apostrophe (``Tis). But at least it doesn't have the errors common in most of the other cheap editions.
It does have proper italics, typographic quotes and dashes. It even has the correct u-with-macron character (one of the few that do). Paragraphs all have a first line indent, even the first in a chapter. But the chapter verses and verse in the text is nicely done. According to the table of contents, it has some extras at the end, but no illustrations, and no extra annotations that I could see. Not too bad an edition, if it wasn't for the weird typos.
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 many editions available. And also look for my review "Kindle Edition Choice is critical" for a review of all the available UK editions as of January 2012. I can't give a live link to the mass review here, but its web address is: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R352D63HO69Y03/
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Incredible India
India: The Peacock's Call
Kim is quite simply the finest story of northern India as it shows the country in the time of the British occupation but with all its complexities; a... Read more
Kim is quite simply the finest story of northern India as it shows the country in the time of the British occupation but with all its complexities; a... Read more
Published 4 months ago by AlineDobbie
A good read
This is definately one of his better books and I think it contains a lot of his childhood years in India. Read more
Published 5 months ago by knocker
Never was there such a book... wonderful!
The book: an orphan in Lahore in around 1890 meets a wandering Tibetan priest and decides to join him in a quest to find a certain philosophical River; on the way they meet all... Read more
Published 8 months ago by H. Beentje
A Visionary Work
If a writer's job is to seduce and intoxicate the reader with his work, then Kipling succeeds in spades with Kim. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Oliver Twist
Indian delight
What a fascinating read. To read about India under British colonial rule at the turn of the century, as well as all the cultural and religious differences going on both then (and... Read more
Published 10 months ago by johnny m
Brilliant book a real gem and classic.
I did not read this one, growing up, and had always wanted to. So I bought for my teenage son, and decided to dip into it. Funny, interesting and very atmospheric. Read more
Published 12 months ago by G Star
Poor formatting
I have read Kim before and was looking forward having it on my Kindle, but unfortunately I found it quite unreadable as
it looks more like an epic poem than prose. Read more
it looks more like an epic poem than prose. Read more
Published 12 months ago by stratigou
Kim, the e-book
I love this book, it's one of my favourites, but the formatting is so irritating that I wouldn't have persevered with reading it if it hadn't been a particularly well-loved story
Published 15 months ago by M. E. Garthwaite
Formatting makes this unreadable
Very disappointed (although i know it's free). The formatting makes this unreadable because the line breaks seem whatever I do to split every line putting the last word on the line... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Andrew Gosden
Kim
I had forgotten how good this was. I first read it many years ago and having just read a history of the 'Great Game' thought I would revisit it. I wasn't disapointed.
Published 19 months ago by L. Cox
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