On the Coffee Table: Kim

Title: Kim
Author: Rudyard Kipling

via Amazon

Kim tells the tale of the orphan son of an Irish soldier, living on the streets of Lahore, late 19th century.  The young, homeless Kim gets by on both wit and charm, weaving in and out of both Hindu and Muslim company as needs suit him.  He is known to his acquaintances as Little Friend of All the World.  He also has a talent for finding people who look out for him.  The Pashtun horse trader (also a British spy) Mahbub Ali employs him as a messenger.  Teshoo Lama, a Tibetan monk, takes him on as guide and disciple.  Through such friends, Kim finds education, adventure and ultimately his own place in the world.

While Kipling's colonialist attitudes are on full display in Kim, his deep love for India, the nation of his birth, is obvious.  Kipling embraces India's rich cultural, lingual, religious and even geographic diversity.  Kim's travels criss-cross the Subcontinent, even taking us to the edge of the Himalayas.  For the author, I can only imagine that Victorian England must have seemed awfully dull in comparison.

I've gone back and forth over whether I would encourage my wife to read Kim.  She loves spy stories though, admittedly, Kim isn't really much of one - more an adventure tale with hints of espionage flavoring.  It's certainly fun as an armchair tour of colonial India but there are probably better books for that, too.  So, probably not.  But it's an enjoyable read.