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  • Published: 1 April 2010
  • ISBN: 9780099540786
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $27.99

Kim




'Rudyard Kipling's masterpiece, and it's one of the dozen books I should most like to have written myself' Geoffrey Moorhouse

'No summary can do this marvellous, rich and unforgettable novel anything like justice' Philip Pullman

Kim is an orphan who earns his living begging on the streets of Lahore. One day he befriends an aged Tibetan Lama who, although content to live simply in India, is a rich and powerful abbot in his own country. When the Lama recruits Kim as a disciple and then funds his education at an English public school an adventure begins that will take the unlikely pair to the Himalayas on a thrilling journey of espionage and enlightenment.

'The greatest of all Kipling's books' E. M. Forster

  • Published: 1 April 2010
  • ISBN: 9780099540786
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $27.99

Other books in the series

The New Penguin Book Of American Short Stories, From Washington Irving To Lydia Davis
A Dog's Heart
The Black Tulip
The Lady of the Camellias
Selected Poetry
On Sparta
Man and Superman
Saint Joan
Botchan
Military Dispatches

About the authors

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, to British parents on December 30, 1865. In 1871 Rudyard and his sister, Trix, aged three, were left to be cared for by a couple in Southsea, England. Five years passed before he saw his parents again. His sense of desertion and despair were later expressed in his story "Baa Baa, Black Sheep" (1888), in his novel The Light That Failed (1890), and in his autobiography, Something of Myself (1937). As late as 1935, Kipling still spoke bitterly of the "House of Desolation" at Southsea: "I should like to burn it down and plough the place with salt." Kipling and his wife settled in Brattleboro, Vermont, where Kipling wrote The Jungle Book (1894), The Second Jungle Book (1895), and most of Captains Courageous (1897). By this time Kipling's popularity and financial success were enormous. In 1899 the Kiplings settled in Sussex, England, where he wrote some of his best books: Kim (1901), Just So Stories (1902), and Puck of Pook's Hill (1906). In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. By the time he died, on January 18, 1936, critical opinion was deeply divided about his writings, but his books continue to be read by thousands.

Pankaj Mishra

Pankaj Mishra is the author of Age of Anger: A History of the Present, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia, and several other books of nonfiction and fiction. Mishra won the 2024 Weston International Award, as well as the 2014 Windham–Campbell Prize for nonfiction. He writes regularly for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and The London Review of Books, among others.

Praise for Kim

No summary can do this marvellous, rich and unforgettable novel anything like justice

Philip Pullman

The greatest of all Kipling's books

E. M. Forster

I'm a passionate fan of Kipling. I think Kim is a singular and extraordinary novel, one of the greatest in English

A. A. Gill

I don't just admire, I adore Kim

Mark Tully

The great adventure of identity, intrigue and India, and several other things too, including the extraordinary potency of words

Guardian

I loved Rudyard Kipling's Kim'

Belle du Jour

A ripping yarn

Diana Quick

As fresh and clear as the air of its Indian mountains setting. The Tibetan magic in it appeals to children, the exotic spirituality to us workers and the dusty adventures of the Grand Trunk Road and the Great Game to anyone

Daily Telegraph