“I have never seen anyone like to thee in all this my life. “Thy chela,” said Kim simply, sitting on his heels. “To none have I spoken of my search, save to the Priest of the Images. “Is this yet another Sending?” cried the lama. “The River of the Arrow?” said Kim, with a superior smile. By this I know that I shall find a certain River for which I seek.” “But I now see that he was but sent upon a purpose.

The latter, and perhaps also the former, are meant (I assume) to give the language a “foreign” air so that we know the characters are not actually speaking in English–and there are also idioms and allusions drawn from the characters’ various cultures and languages that add to the effect. But I also found it something of a slog to get through, mostly because so much of the dialogue is a wearying blend of theatrical posturing and archaisms. I guess it was lively and entertaining, occasionally, and it was also occasionally beautiful and poetic, and funny, and suspenseful. I also imagined it would be lively and entertaining to read. I imagined it was some combination of adventure story and Bildungsroman–and, again, it is indeed both of those things. Without knowing much specific about it, I did know that it was about an English boy growing up in India and thus about empire and colonialism and national identity (again, strictly speaking, Kim turns out to be Irish, which is of course relevant to those themes as well). It seemed plausible to me before I read it that I might add it to the reading list for my course in the late(r) 19th-century novel (though strictly speaking, Kim is a 20th-century novel, as it was originally published in 1901). I read Kim because it–and Kipling more generally– seemed like a gap in my knowledge of “my” field. He was one insignificant person in all this roaring whirl of India, going southward to he knew not what fate. Who is Kim?” He considered his own identity, a thing he had never done before, till his head swam. This is the great world, and I am only Kim. But I am to pray to Bibi Miriam, and I am a Sahib”–he looked at his boots ruefully. “Hai mai ! I go from one place to another as it might be a kickball.

Rudyard kipling kim book