"Kim" by Rudyard Kipling (1901)

Of course, I know who is Rudyard Kipling - the British author who created Mowgli and The Jungle Book (and inadvertently, Tarzan that was inspired by them) - but I have actually never read anything by him. He might have not been the top of priority of translated authors in my country, in fact, a quick glance at online library catalogue lists "Kim" being translated and published only twice, in 1928. and finally again in 2019. The Jungle Book was a little more represented, but it never caught my attention since as a kid I was familiar with Disney cartoon version, hence it worked against the novel(s). Its only because I have never read Kipling, that I have selected this novel. I thought it might be good introduction to his writing style and I was not disappointed.

"Kim" won me over instantly, on a very first page. There is a beauty and magic in approaching the book without any knowledge about it, without any prejudices or preconceptions, just facing the opening page and discovering the storyteller's voice. And this voice said: "His nickname through the wards was ‘Little Friend of all the World’; and very often, being lithe and inconspicuous, he executed commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion. It was intrigue, of course,—he knew that much, as he had known all evil since he could speak,—but what he loved was the game for its own sake—the stealthy prowl through the dark gullies and lanes, the crawl up a water-pipe, the sights and sounds of the women’s world on the flat roofs, and the headlong flight from housetop to housetop under cover of the hot dark."

The storytelling itself was wonderfully old-fashioned and occasionally long-winded as expected from a Victorian novels - in many ways it reminded me of "The Coral Island" by R. M. Ballantyne - another creaky, dusty old adventure novel that comes from another time and it might be offensive to readers who are searching for things to be offended by. I was not offended by anything, because I perfectly understand that in his description of India under British rule, he was never malicious but actually genuinely affectionate towards the place where he was born and spent his youth. The novel is about plucky orphan Kim and his friend, elderly Tibetan lama Teshoo Lama  who are together travelling trough India in search of mysterious ″River of the Arrow″ (which might not even exist, as lama is very religious and follows his own paths), while there are many war-related spy intrigues around them. It sounds fairly straightforward, but Kipling has a deliciously old-fashioned way of writing so it takes a while to get trough the novel, I was busy with it forever but now very glad that I have finished it. I genuinely loved both main characters and cared for them.