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Title: Kim by Rudyard Kipling, Julio Izquierdo Croselles, Julio Izquierdo Crocelles, Oscar Diaz ISBN: 9-5094136-3-1 Publisher: Del Sol/Argentina Pub. Date: February, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.89 (47 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: a mild but quite thorough story of initiation:
Comment: Kim is honestly a fun book. This is not to say that there aren't lapses, tedious mirings that swirl around the overall ebullient excitment, but these stem more from an excess of the author's wordplay than from anything else. The story is on the surface rather quaint: Orphaned British tyke grows up alone in India, has the internal wits and capacity to learn basic survival skills and has the ambition and sense of humor to make something of a name for himself. From there he meets a 'holy man'--not one in the traditional sense of Western (or even Eastern) literature, but here is more of a true seeker, someone not pulled down by the conventions of organized religiousosity, but one moreso looking for a one-on-one understanding of God. There is a great deal of subtle and transmogrified mythologizing--the traditional fables bowled over by reality, the high, idealistic hopes often stunted in birth by more rational and everyday life concerns. Kim, street-smart and wise before his time, is fascinated by the holy man's honesty and feels some compelling need to accompany the man on his random journies.
Kim is the story of two journies, certainly the holy man's as well as Kim's own, the reckoning with cultural identity and the east/west clash in a time of subterfuge and war. It is really a quite powerful story, dulled down at times by the author's seemingly ceaseless wonder, but for a tale marketed as being about a white European lost in the maze of turn-of-the-century India, there is a great deal that is very contemporary and an enormous amount of action and even betrayal.
Give it a go and read it to your kids. There are many valuable life lessons Kipling makes an attempt to teach and many wrong paths he explains to us all about taking.
Rating: 2
Summary: Stunningly Overrated
Comment: Am I missing something here? Apparently. I found Kipling's writing extremely stilted and archaic, in a bad way (not in a say, Shakespeare way). The characters were one-dimensional, and the plot was heaped with deus-ex-machinas. I had to struggle to get through every page, and force myself to read a designated amount each night in order to finish it (it took me almost a week, and it's not a long book). The writing is filled with colloquialisms and foreign expressions, and I had to constantly flip to the Endnotes to decipher the code, which was extremely inconvenient. I did learn something about India and its history, and I can't wait to read a better novel on the subject.
Rating: 5
Summary: A tug of war between Kipling's two minds
Comment: Some say Kipling was an imperialist. Some say he was an Indophile. I think he was both at the same time. One Kipling was a polished and sophisticated part of the ruling class, the British. Another Kipling was a child, innocent of the artificial divisions of the society, fascinated by the color and splendour of the Jewel in the Crown, India. This novel at a subtle level, to me, represents a tug of war between the the two warring Kiplings. While the British elite Kipling is forced to believe in the good the Raj is doing to the poor rascals, the other Kipling has his doubts and frustrated by his inability to declare them freely, they find a veiled expression in Kim.
Kim is a Classic story of a boy's adventure in British India. There runs a background plot about "the great game", the spying war between the British and the Russian empires. Kim becomes a chain-man (spy) for the British and his native early years make him formidable in the profession. However more interesting is the other parallel story, that of friendship between Kim and a Tibetan lama and their wanderings together which also make this a road novel.
Kipling understands the oriental way of life and its philosophy. "Only chicken and Sahibs walk around without reason" he says. Through many such comments Kipling questions the western way of work, hurry and constant activity. As the lama says "to refrain from any action is best".
Lastly, one can not but wonder, how much Kim represents a fantacy of Kipling that he wanted to happen to himself. A few common facts between the story and Kipling's own life, for example his father's association with the Lahore Musuem, his own schooling experience etc are revealing. They almost make you hear Kipling sighing "I wish thus would have happened with me!"
Highly recommended.
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Title: Quest for Kim : In Search of Kipling's Great Game by Peter Hopkirk ISBN: 0472086340 Publisher: UMP Pub. Date: 07 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling ISBN: 0812504690 Publisher: Tor Books Pub. Date: 15 February, 1992 List Price(USD): $2.99 |
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Title: The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk ISBN: 1568360223 Publisher: Kodansha International Pub. Date: April, 1994 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling ISBN: 0451523814 Publisher: New American Library Pub. Date: August, 1989 List Price(USD): $3.95 |
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Title: The Man Who Would Be King, and Other Stories by Rudyard Kipling, Louis L. Cornell ISBN: 0192836293 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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