Kim: The Graphic Novel (Campfire Graphic Novels) - Softcover

Kipling, Rudyard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9380028423 ISBN 13: 9789380028422

Publisher: Campfire, 2011

Synopsis

Kimball O'Hara was a child, like many others, living on the streets of India in the early 1900s. That was, until he befriended a Buddhist lama and became his disciple.

The story of Kim follows our cheeky, fun-loving hero as he journeys across northern India - from Lahore to the vast beauty of the Himalayan mountains - in the company of the lama. The two of them have different goals, but the physical paths they follow are very similar.

Before leaving Lahore, Kim is entrusted by one of his father's friends to deliver a very special message. Through this he meets a member of the British Secret Service and discovers secrets he couldn't have imagined. As the story progresses and his journey continues, Kim begins to learn more and more about what is known as the Great Game.

As we follow Kim, we see him transformed from a simple vagabond into a sharpened operative in the dangerous world of politics, betrayal and death. All the excitement of Kim's adventures takes place in the backdrop of a beautiful country full of amazing sights, incredible sounds and an extremely rich culture.

In what is considered by many to be Kipling's finest work, he draws on his own experiences of living in India to tell an unforgettable and action-packed story within a vivid and accurate setting.

About this title

Review

One of the particular pleasures of reading Kim is the full range of emotion, knowledge, and experience that Rudyard Kipling gives his complex hero. Kim O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier stationed in India, is neither innocent nor victimized. Raised by an opium-addicted half-caste woman since his equally dissolute father's death, the boy has grown up in the streets of Lahore:

Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim was white--a poor white of the very poorest.

From his father and the woman who raised him, Kim has come to believe that a great destiny awaits him. The details, however, are a bit fuzzy, consisting as they do of the woman's addled prophecies of "'a great Red Bull on a green field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and'--dropping into English--'nine hundred devils.'"

In the meantime, Kim amuses himself with intrigues, executing "commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion." His peculiar heritage as a white child gone native, combined with his "love of the game for its own sake," makes him uniquely suited for a bigger game. And when, at last, the long-awaited colonel comes along, Kim is recruited as a spy in Britain's struggle to maintain its colonial grip on India. Kipling was, first and foremost, a man of his time; born and raised in India in the 19th century, he was a fervid supporter of the Raj. Nevertheless, his portrait of India and its people is remarkably sympathetic. Yes, there is the stereotypical Westernized Indian Babu Huree Chander with his atrocious English, but there is also Kim's friend and mentor, the Afghani horse trader Mahub Ali, and the gentle Tibetan lama with whom Kim travels along the Grand Trunk Road. The humanity of his characters consistently belies Kipling's private prejudices, and raises Kim above the mere ripping good yarn to the level of a timeless classic. --Alix Wilber

From the Publisher

Kim is an orphan, living from hand to mouth in the teeming streets of Lahore. One day he meets a man quite unlike anything in his wide experience, a Tibetan lama on a quest. Kim's life suddenly acquires meaning and purpose as he becomes the lama's guide and protector--his chela. Other forces are at work as Kim is sucked into the intrigue of the Great Game and travels the Grand Trunk Road with his lama.

How Kim and the lama meet their respective destinies on the road and in the mountains of India forms one of the most compelling adventure tales of all time.

Edition details

• Publisher: Campfire
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 9380028423
• ISBN 13: 9789380028422
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 72
• Illustrator: Kumar Rakesh