Kim

£7.99

“Kim”, Rudyard Kipling’s epic rendition of the imperial experience in India, is arguably his greatest piece of long prose.

Kim, a boy growing into early manhood and the lama, an old ascetic priest - are fired by a quest. Kim is white, a sahib, although born in India; while he wants to play the Great Game of Imperialism, he is also spiritually bound to the lama and he tries to reconcile these opposing strands. The lama, meanwhile, searches for redemption from the Wheel of Life.

Viewed by some as a piece of children’s literature, Kipling’s intended audience was never verified before his death and many literary academics argue that it is a piece of adult literature- either way, what is clear is the book appeals to many ages, perhaps having a greater effect on the older reader.

A celebration of their friendship in an often hostile environment, “Kim” captures the opulence of India’s exotic landscape, overlaid by the uneasy presence of the British Raj- like Forster's "A Passage to India", this is a book that still has profound echoes with today's multicultural society.