The Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling
The Jungle Book
Mowgli is Kim's closest relative in Kipling's work, another boy caught between two worlds.
Read our takeKim
Rudyard Kipling
Kim
An Irish orphan in Lahore walks the roads of India with an old Tibetan lama, and is quietly trained as a British spy.
- 1901
- 460
- Atmospheric
- Exuberant
- episodic
- lyrical
- political
About Rudyard Kipling
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeRudyard Kipling's Kim, published in 1901, follows Kimball O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, who has grown up on the streets of Lahore. He can pass for a Hindu or a Muslim boy and speaks the local languages better than English. When an old lama from Tibet arrives at the Lahore Museum, looking for a sacred river that washes away sin, Kim becomes his disciple and takes to the Grand Trunk Road with him. On the way Kim carries a secret message for Mahbub Ali, a horse-dealer who spies for the British. Colonel Creighton sends him to school and trains him for the Great Game, the spying contest between Britain and Russia in Asia. Kim ends up serving both his teacher and the British government.
The story, in more detail
Kipling started Kim in 1892 and did not publish it until 1901. The novel ran as a serial in McClure's Magazine in the United States from December 1900 to October 1901, and in Cassell's Magazine in England from January to November 1901. Doubleday, Page published the book in New York on 1 October 1901, and Macmillan in London on 17 October.[1]
Kipling's father helped him with it. In Something of Myself he called the book "nakedly picaresque and plotless", and said it grew like the Djinn released from the brass bottle.[1] His father, John Lockwood Kipling, had been curator of the Lahore Museum, the Wonder House where the novel opens. Sharad Keskar, writing for the Kipling Society, sees him in the curator who gives the lama his own spectacles.[2][1]
Kim, like Kipling, was born in 1865, and the book is Kipling's last long look at the India he had grown up in.[1] Daniel Karlin writes that Kipling's major writing about India was not finished until Kim.[3] Kipling never went back to India after 1891.
The full plot
The novel opens with Kim sitting astride the great gun Zam-Zammah outside the Lahore Museum. He is thirteen and lives on his wits. His father, a sergeant in an Irish regiment called the Mavericks, died poor and left him papers in an amulet case and a prophecy: one day a Red Bull on a green field will come for him. A lama from the Such-zen monastery in Tibet arrives at the museum, looking for the River of the Arrow, which sprang where the Buddha's arrow fell. Kim decides to go with him as his chela, his disciple.[4]
Before they leave, Mahbub Ali, a Pathan horse-dealer, gives Kim a folded paper to deliver to an Englishman at Umballa. The paper is the pedigree of a white stallion, and it is really intelligence about a planned war on the frontier. On the Grand Trunk Road Kim and the lama meet soldiers, pilgrims, and an old widow from the hills who travels in style. Then they walk into the camp of the Mavericks, whose flag is a red bull on green. The regiment's chaplains find Kim's papers and take him in.[4]
The lama pays three hundred rupees a year for Kim to be educated at St Xavier's, a school for European boys at Lucknow. Colonel Creighton, who runs British intelligence behind a post in the Ethnological Survey, sees what Kim could be. In the holidays Kim goes back to the road in disguise. He is trained by Lurgan Sahib, a Simla dealer in jewels, and learns to survey land as a chain-man. After three years he rejoins the lama. With Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, a Bengali agent, he sets out into the Himalayas, where two foreign spies, a Russian and a Frenchman, are making maps.[4]
How it ends — spoilers ahead
The Russian strikes the lama in a quarrel over a drawing, and Kim knocks him down. The hill porters desert the spies, and Kim takes their papers, maps and letters from one of the baskets. The Woman of Shamlegh, a hillwoman, helps him hide them. Kim and the lama come down from the mountains exhausted and ill, and the old widow from the road nurses them at her house.
Kim passes the papers to Hurree and recovers, and feels the world lock back into place around him. The lama tells him that he went into a trance for two days and nights and saw all of India at once. He came back from the edge of freedom for Kim's sake, and fell into a brook that he now knows is the River of the Arrow. The novel ends with the lama smiling, sure that both of them are saved. Kim will go on into the Great Game.
Themes and analysis
"Who is Kim?"
The novel keeps asking who Kim is. On the first page he is "burned black as any native" and speaks the vernacular by choice, but the narrator insists he is white, "a poor white of the very poorest". At school he has to become a Sahib. On the road he is the lama's chela. Again and again the book stops for him to ask himself the question. The last time, recovering from illness, he feels the wheels of his being lock up anew on the world.
Critics have argued for decades about whether Kim betrays the lama by working for the British. Edmund Wilson thought so. Sharad Keskar, writing for the Kipling Society, answers that Kim is devoted to his teacher throughout and quotes Kim's protest, "I am not a Sahib. I am thy chela." The lama pays for Kim's schooling knowing what it will fit him for.
The Great Game
The Great Game is the novel's name for the spying between Britain and Russia, each trying to gain the upper hand in South Asia. Everyone in it has a cover. Mahbub Ali trades horses, Colonel Creighton studies ethnology, Lurgan Sahib sells jewels, and Hurree Babu collects facts for the Royal Society. Kim's first job is to carry a horse's pedigree that is really news of a war.
Kipling spends a long time on the training. At Lurgan Sahib's shop in Simla, Kim plays the Play of the Jewels: he looks at a tray of stones for a short time and has to list them afterwards. Mahbub Ali tells the Colonel that in the real Game Kim will go alone. If he so much as sits down the wrong way, he may be killed.
The empire in the background
Kim has been admired by very different readers. At the 1907 Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy's speech singled out the lama for a tenderness and charm unusual in Kipling. The same speech called Kipling an imperialist. The Indian writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri called Kim "great by any standards that ever obtained in any age of English literature".
The modern argument about the book starts with Edward Said, who introduced the Penguin Classics edition in 1987. The Kipling Society summarises his case: Kipling relies on stereotypes, and in his India nobody resists British rule, which is historically untrue. Many critics built on Said's reading. Harish Trivedi, who edited the Penguin edition of 2011, has argued against parts of it.
Hurree Chunder Mookerjee is the clearest example of what Said meant. He speaks a comic, mangled English and calls himself "a fearful man" because he is Bengali. The English drummer-boy at the barracks calls Indians by a slur, and the novel shows him being despised for it. The manuscript also held a chapter about a lynching on a railway train, which Kipling cut; it is printed in the Longman Cultural Edition of 2010.
A Frenchman in the Himalayas, and Kim in Paris
The enemy agents in the mountains are a Russian and a Frenchman working together. Hurree Babu plans to join them as an interpreter, because, he says, he knows his French pretty well and has friends in Chandernagore. The Frenchman admires the mountains as if he were looking at a painting. The Russian is the one who strikes the lama.
In Paris the book was out within a year. The Société du Mercure de France published Kim, roman in 1902, translated by Louis Fabulet and Ch. Fountaine-Walker. Fabulet had already translated The Jungle Book for the same house.
Quotes from Kim
He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher—the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum.
This is the great world, and I am only Kim. Who is Kim?
When he comes to the Great Game he must go alone—alone, and at peril of his head.
Why we recommend it
The road through all of India
Kim and the lama walk the Grand Trunk Road among soldiers, pilgrims, horse-traders and a widow who travels with an escort. Angus Wilson said he knew no other English novel that so celebrates the human urban scene.
A teacher and a pupil who save each other
The lama needs Kim to survive in the world, and Kim needs the lama for something he cannot name. The ending turns on what each gives up for the other.
A spy story with a Buddhist monk at its heart
Secret messages, false identities, memory training and stolen maps, run by a colonel who poses as an ethnologist, while the lama looks for his river.
At the centre of the argument about empire
Edward Said's 1987 introduction made Kim a test case for how empire shapes a novel. Reading the book is the only way to take part in that argument.
What this book explores
The people in its pages
Kim (Kimball O'Hara)
The orphaned son of an Irish soldier, raised on the streets of Lahore. Known as Little Friend of all the World. Becomes the lama's disciple and a British agent at the same time.
Teshoo Lama
An old abbot from the Such-zen monastery in Tibet, searching India for the River of the Arrow. Pays for Kim's schooling and calls him his chela.
Mahbub Ali
A Pathan horse-dealer from the north, known in every cantonment. Spies for the British, and trusts Kim because Kim has never lied to him.
Colonel Creighton
An officer of the Ethnological Survey who runs British intelligence. Sees in Kim a boy who can pass anywhere.
Hurree Chunder Mookerjee
A Bengali agent who hides his work behind comic English and a claim to be a fearful man. Walks into the foreign spies' camp alone.
Lurgan Sahib
A dealer in jewels and curiosities at Simla who trains Kim's memory and nerve for the Game.
Also in the book
The Woman of Shamlegh
A woman of the hill village of Shamlegh who helps Kim hide the spies' papers, and makes it clear she would like him to stay.
Bring it to book club
- Kim is told on the first page that he is white and English. How much does the rest of the novel agree?
- Does Kim betray the lama by working for Colonel Creighton?
- Everyone in the Great Game has a cover. Which character's cover do you believe most?
- Hurree Babu is written as a comic figure but does some of the bravest work in the book. What do you make of him?
- Edward Said said the novel shows an India where nobody resists British rule. Can you find resistance anywhere in it?
- The lama finds his River in a brook near a house. Is the ending a joke, a miracle or both?
Timeline
1892
Kipling begins work on Kim.
1900
The novel begins as a serial in McClure's Magazine in the United States in December.
1901
Cassell's Magazine serialises Kim in England from January. Doubleday, Page publishes the book in New York on 1 October, and Macmillan in London on 17 October.
1902
Kim, roman, translated by Louis Fabulet and Ch. Fountaine-Walker, is published in Paris by the Société du Mercure de France.
1907
The Swedish Academy's Nobel Prize speech singles out the lama of Kim for his tenderness and charm.
1987
Penguin Classics publishes Kim with an introduction by Edward Said, which starts the modern argument about the novel and empire.
2011
Penguin Classics publishes a new edition edited by Harish Trivedi.
Book editions
- Paperback
- Penguin Classics
- 2011
- 9780141442372
- Paperback
- Penguin Classics
- 1987
- 9780140432817
- Paperback
- Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics)
- 2008
- 9780199536467
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Doubleday, Page & Co.
- 1901
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Macmillan and Co.
- 1901
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Société du Mercure de France
- 1902
- Louis Fabulet and Ch. Fountaine-Walker
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
The Man Who Would Be King
Rudyard Kipling
The Man Who Would Be King
Kipling's early story of two British adventurers beyond the frontier, and a much darker view of the Game.
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Burmese Days
George Orwell's novel of colonial Burma, written thirty years later from inside the administration Kim serves.
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Critical Essays
Orwell's 1942 essay on Kipling, the classic statement of what can and cannot be defended in him.
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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The other great novel of a boy travelling with an outcast companion, which critics often set beside Kim.
Read our takeKim: frequently asked questions
What is Kim about?
An orphaned Irish boy in Lahore who becomes the disciple of an old Tibetan lama and, at the same time, a spy for the British. The two of them walk across northern India, the lama looking for a holy river and Kim learning the Great Game.
What is the Great Game in Kim?
The spying between Britain and Russia for the upper hand in South Asia. In the novel it is run by Colonel Creighton, and its agents include a horse-dealer, a jewel dealer and a Bengali scholar.
What is the Play of the Jewels in Kim?
A memory test. Lurgan Sahib shows Kim a tray of jewels for a short time, covers it, and asks him to list what he saw. The test is part of Kim's training for the Great Game.
Is Kim racist?
The novel uses racial stereotypes and takes British rule for granted, and Edward Said built his famous critique on those points. Other readers, among them the Indian writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri, have called it one of the greatest novels in English.
Who is the lama in Kim?
Teshoo Lama, the old abbot of the Such-zen monastery in Tibet. He comes to India to find the River of the Arrow, which he believes washes away all sin. The Swedish Academy's Nobel Prize speech of 1907 praised the tenderness and charm of his portrait.
When was Kim first published in French?
In 1902. Louis Fabulet and Ch. Fountaine-Walker translated it, and the Société du Mercure de France published it in Paris.
How long is Kim?
Fifteen chapters, about 460 pages in the first New York edition. Modern paperbacks run to about 300 to 370 pages.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Kim, its publication, and its place in literary history.
2↑Kim — notes on Chapter I
WebsiteThe Kipling SocietyUsed forJohn Lockwood Kipling as curator of the Lahore Museum.
3↑The Jungle Books: an introduction, by Daniel Karlin
WebsiteThe Kipling Society, 1987Used forDaniel Karlin on Kim as the end of Kipling's major writing about India.
5Decolonising the curriculum
WebsiteThe Kipling SocietyUsed forThe Kipling Society's summary of Edward Said's critique, the critics who followed him and Harish Trivedi's reply.
6Award ceremony speech, Nobel Prize in Literature 1907 (C. D. af Wirsén)
WebsiteNobel Prize Outreach, 1907Used forThe Swedish Academy on the lama of Kim, and on Kipling as imperialist.
8Kim : roman, trans. Louis Fabulet and Ch. Fountaine Walker, Paris: Société du Mercure de France, 1902 — catalogue record
Official recordBibliothèque nationale de FranceUsed forThe Bibliothèque nationale de France record of the Paris translation.
9Livre de la jungle, trans. Louis Fabulet and Robert d'Humières, Paris: Société du Mercure de France, 1899 — catalogue record
Official recordBibliothèque nationale de FranceUsed forThe 1899 Paris translation of The Jungle Book by the same translator and publisher.
10Kim — Open Library edition records (work OL19908W)
WebsiteOpen Library, Internet ArchiveUsed forCatalogue records for the 1901 editions and the modern Penguin and Oxford ISBNs.
11Kim, edited by Harish Trivedi (Penguin Classics) — publisher's page
WebsitePenguin Books, 2011Used forThe publisher's page for the 2011 Penguin Classics edition edited by Harish Trivedi.
12Kim
NovelRudyard Kipling, 1901Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
i
Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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