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Kim by Rudyard Kipling
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English (35)  Dutch (1)  German (1)  All languages (37)
Showing 1-5 of 35 (next | show all)
Reading "Kim" is difficult ... listening to the tale read by Adrian Praetzellis at Librivox.com is delightful! ( )
  evertrap | Feb 3, 2010 |
I’m sorry that I can’t pass judgment on whether or not Kim deserves a place on Newsweek’s Fifty Books for Our Times, I stopped reading at the end of Chapter VI, almost 100 pages into the copy I had. Why didn’t it grab me? It may be that I was put off by what I considered racist and stereotypical characterizations (although, I understand that a writer’s work is a product of the time he lives in, and I usually can put that in context). This scene takes place on a train (p 24):

‘And wither goest thou?’ said the woman, handing him the half of a cake from a greasy package.

‘Even to Benares.’

‘Jugglers belike?’ the young soldier suggested. Have ye any tricks to pass the time? Why does not that yellow man answer?’

‘Because,’ said Kim stoutly, ‘he is holy, and thinks upon matters hidden from thee.’

‘That may be well. We of the Loodhiana Sikhs,’ he rolled it out sonorously, ‘do not trouble our heads with doctrine. We fight.’

‘My sister’s brother’s son in naik (corporal) in the regiment,’ said the Sikh craftsman quietly. ‘There are also some Dogra companies there.’ The soldier glared, for a Dogra is of other caste than a Sikh, and the banker tittered.

‘They are all one to me,’ said the Amritzar girl.

‘That we believe,’ snorted the cultivator’s wife malignantly.
Or, it may be that I found myself trudging through stilted language (see “wither goest thou” and various “ye”s and “thee“s in the passage above), when I simply wanted to read for the story.

Kim is said to be a coming-of-age story coupled with an adventure story, complete with spies and intrigue. Here’s the publisher’s synopsis:

Kim is an orphan, living from hand to mouth in the teeming streets of Lahore. One day he meets a man quite unlike anything in his wide experience, a Tibetan lama on a quest. Kim’s life suddenly acquires meaning and purpose as he becomes the lama’s guide and protector–his chela. Other forces are at work as Kim is sucked into the intrigue of the Great Game and travels the Grand Trunk Road with his lama. How Kim and the lama meet their respective destinies on the road and in the mountains of India forms one of the most compelling adventure tales of all time.
I read to a turning point, when Kim was faced with a previously unknown truth about his past which might greatly impact his future. I just didn’t have it in me to read the remaining 60% of the book. Perhaps one day I’ll listen on audio (or even see a movie adaptation), and find out what I was missing.

Beth Fish said that she especially enjoyed the setting in India. I have to agree that Kipling did put us on a path of excitement. Reading his descriptions of the Grand Trunk Road, as Kim saw it for the first time, had me revisiting old history lessons to refresh my memory of this bustling major route.

Full review at: http://www.sheistoofondofbooks.com/20...
She is Too Fond of Books ( )
  TooFondOfBooks | Jan 9, 2010 |
This is my dad's favorite book and he has been telling me to read this one for years. I loved the relationship aspect of this story. Kim's attachment to the Lama and vice-versa is truly inspiring. I also loved Kim's resourcefulness, he takes any situation and comes out on top. I understand now why my dad has to go back every few years to read it. ( )
  mmillet | Dec 14, 2009 |
I hoped the longer I read this, the easier it would become. You know once I got a feel for the writing style, well that never happened for me. Half the time I wasn’t sure who was talking to whom or even what they were talking about. I think I should have just watched Errol Flynn in the movie ( )
  avalon_today | Oct 3, 2009 |
925 Kim, by Rudyard Kipling (read 2 Nov 1967) I don't much remember what I thought of this book, but I think I found it of some interest. See Kim (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for more on the book. ( )
  Schmerguls | Sep 28, 2009 |
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Series (with order)
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People/Characters
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Important events
Related movies
Kim (1950IMDb)
Kim (1955IMDb)
Kim (1984IMDb)
Awards and honors
Epigraph
Oh ye who tread the Narrow Way

By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day,

Be gentle when the heathen pray

To Buddha at Kamakura!
Dedication
First words
He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher - the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum.
Quotations
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
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References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (2)

Edward Said

World's Best Reading

Book description

Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0140183523, Paperback)

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:
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.
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

(retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:57:51 -0500)

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