Kim
Rudyard Kipling
366 pages, including extensive preface and notes
published in 1901

Kipling is one of those writers of whom I haven't read much, but did pick up quite a bit of through cultural osmosis. Jungle Book, Gunga Din, Tommy 'Atkins, "East is east" and all that. I had wanted to sample the real Kipling for some time now, when I saw Kim on the stacks of my library. As an introduction to Kipling it's a good start, especially since I'd become interested in the period and place Kim is set in: India during the Great Game between England and Russia.

The Great Game was the game of political and militairy manoeuvring in Central Asia, where both Russia and England tried to gain dominance. The latter to safeguard her colonial empire in the Indian subcontinent, the latter as a logical extension of their colonial empire, which for centuries had been creeping east and southward.

Kim starts when the titular main character meets with his new master and friend, the Tibetian Lama who's in search of the Buddha's river of the Arrow, in which to wash away his sins. Kim himself is a poor orphan white, of the lowest class, "but white still", who's living as a native on the streets of Lahore. He decides to accompany the Lama on his quest, at the same time using this opportunity to deliver an important message from Mahbub Ali, a political agent for the British Raj. This of course is only the start of his involvement in the Great Game, which is the second important plotstrand in Kim next to his journey with the Lama.

I won't go further into the plot, as it would be tedious to provide a summary. It is only the hook on which the real story, of the coming of age of Kim is told. It's not coincidence that one plot thread is rooted in the physical, the other in the spiritual...

Though this is, as Edward Said makes abundantly clear in his excellent preface, quite clearly a pro-imperialist novel, that doesn't make it offensive, at least not to me. Kipling is a product of his times and he may be willingly blind to the reality of British rule, but he is a good enough writer and has enough love and understanding for the Indian people to overcome this. There's a real interest in the country itself, it's not just used as an exotic locale for an adventure story.