Kim

Kim is probably one of the best books ever written on India and certainly within the league of E.M. Forster and Paul Scott. This little treasure describes India with a love and power of observation that is absolutely captivating and charming at the same time. Kim is a rogue like Huck Finn and Oliver Twist. He is the man for all opportunities and is called the "Friend of all Mankind". He is neither Hindu nor Muslim, he is neither Buddhist nor Christian. Given his background as the orphan son of a Irish military man and a local girl he is a little bit of everything. In Kim, Kipling personifies all the good of India while playing down the contrasts, in particular the religious one; he shows us what India would have been like in an ideal situation of mutual tolerance. Apart from these philosophical considerations, Kim is simply a very well written book. Every passage betrays Kipling’s background as a poet and sometimes passages really need to be reread for their beauty. His observations are striking and one realizes from time to time that it is not the writers imagination about a period long gone; he was actually part of that period. One thing Kim is not: a children’s book. Like Siddhartha, a child may be the main character, but the book is far too philosophical to be of much interest to children, though it remains a captivating classic of Indian literature.