Book dossier

Quest for Kim

by Peter Hopkirk

Fascinated since childhood by Kim, that strange tale of an orphan boy's recruitment into the Indian secret service, Peter Hopkirk, the renowned author of The Great Game, here sets out on an intriguing journey across India and Pakistan to unlock the many mysteries surrounding Kipling's great novel. As he travels, Hopkirk's detective work reveals that most of Kim's characters - Kim himself, the old Tibetan lama, Colonel Creighton, Mahbub Ali, Lurgan Sahib and the Babu (or agent R 17) - were inspired in whole or in part by actual individuals. Likewise its locations are real - all of them familiar to the young Kipling when, more than a century ago, he worked as a reporter on a Lahore newspaper. Because its hero is a teenage boy, many people mistakenly believe Kim to be a children's book. But nothing could be further from the truth, and modern critics judge it to be one of the finest novels in the English language, unsurpassed in many of its descriptive passages. For into it Kipling poured all of his deeply felt passion for India. Hopkirk carefully sketches in Kipling's narrative so that it is not essential to have read Kim in order to enjoy this book. It is both a travel adventure and a literary detective story, but above all an affectionate salute to Kim by one in whom it inspired a lifelong pursuit of the Great Game - "that never ceases day and night" and still goes on today.