Kim
1907 Nobel Prize in Literature
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
RG Silver Medal 1996
1996 at Eliane's House
Synopsis
Kim is the story of Kimball O'Hara, the orphaned son
of an Irish soldier, who spends his childhood as a vagabond
in Lahore. With an old Tibetan lama he travels through India,
enthralled by the "roaring whirl" and kaleidoscope
of the country's landscape and its cities of richly coloured
bazaars and immense diversity of people.
First lines
He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride
the gun ZamZammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher
- the Wonder House, as the natives called the Lahore Museum.
Who hold Zam-Zammah, that 'fire-breathing dragon', hold the
Punjab; for the great green bronze piece is always first of
the conqueror's loot.
Our comments
 This
book definitely fell into the "ought-to-read" category rather
than "want-to" for me. So it was a wonderful surprise to find
that Kim is not the colonialist, old-fashioned Victorian
yarn I had expected but an evocative and sympathetic picture
of India wrapped around an interesting and exciting adventure.
The book definitely changed my view of Kipling.
Related resources
Nobel
Prize Citation 1907
Biography
on Pegasos site
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