Kim
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“Kim” is a novel by English author Rudyard Kipling, originally published as a serial in McClure's Magazine between December 1900 and October 1901. The story revolves around the young Kim and aged priest Lama who together venture off on a mutual quest, although for very different reasons. Though now a controversial novel, “Kim” is considered Kipling's greatest literary accomplishment and offers poignant insights into the religious, social, and political issues of the time. Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was an English novelist, journalist, poet, and short-story writer most famous for his stories set in and related to colonial India. He innovated the art of short story writing and was one of the most popular writers in the U.K. during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Other notable works by this author include: “The Jungle Book” (1894), “The White Man's Burden” (1899), and “The Man Who Would Be King” (1888). Read & Co. Classics is republishing this classic story now in a new edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kipling's inspirational poem the one that begins, "If you can keep your head when all about you/ Are losing theirs" describes how to preserve one's honor by the principled avoidance of political and moral pitfalls. Italian artist Manna imagines the "you" of the poem as a boy journeying through a series of watercolor landscapes: fields under billowing clouds, misty nights, craggy mountaintops. To accompany the poem's first line, Manna paints the boy watching from a great green meadow as storm clouds approach; he stands and watches with a cool head, rather than running in fear. For "If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew/ To serve your turn long after they are gone," Manna shows the boy climbing a rocky pitch, the peaks of other mountains poking through the clouds below. Flying kites represent temptation, and dull-eyed marionettes represent allies who can't be trusted ("If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken/ Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools"). Though young readers may not fathom the poem's complexities, the grandeur of Manna's scenes conveys the loftiness of Kipling's sentiments. Ages 6 8.
