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Collins Classics - Kim
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Product Description
Review
Rudyard Kipling's masterly Kim comes as quite a relief in this abridged version read by Madhav Sharma. It always comes up gold, packed with ravishing scenic descriptions, characters and a sense of culture and period as the orphan Irish lad, brought up in Lahore street life, who embarks on a fascinating journey, joining the Indian Civil Service and developing into a master spy. --Robert Giddings, Tribune Magazine
--This text refers to the
Audio CD
edition.
Product Description
Kim (1901) is one of Kipling's masterpieces. Through the story of the young orphan Kimball O'Hara, and his vocation in the Secret Service, Kipling presents a vivid picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the bazaars and the road.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Great Game,
By M. Dowden (London, UK) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Kim (Wordsworth Classics) (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.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful and sympathetic,
This review is from: Kim (Penguin Modern Classics) (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.
43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A good effort, but with odd typos.,
By
This review is from: Kim (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/
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