Kim

By: Rudyard Kipling

Narrated by: Sam Dastor

Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

Exclusively from Audible

Kipling's masterpiece Kim is his final and most famous work and one of the first and greatest espionage stories ever written. It explores the life of Kimball O'Hara, an Irish orphan who spends his childhood as a vagrant in Lahore. When he befriends an aged Tibetan lama his life is transformed as he is requested to accompany him on a mysterious quest to find the legendary River of the Arrow and achieve Enlightenment. The pilgrimage will take them across the vast continent, across rivers, and up the Himalayas.

While Kim wishes to take part in the imperialistic Great Game, learning espionage from the British secret service, he feels spiritually bound to the lama. Kim has a difficult choice to make: his companion or his country?

A rich and colourful depiction of India's exotic landscape and culture in the imperialistic world of the late 19th century, this audiobook celebrates their friendship and explores a young man's quest for identity.

Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist who was the first English language author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Some of his most memorable works include The Jungle Book and Just So Stories.

In 1998 Kim was ranked at Number 78 on the Modern Library's list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003 it was listed on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's 'best-loved novel'.

Narrator Biography

A Cambridge graduate who trained at RADA under the direction of Sir Laurence Olivier, Sam Dastor has long featured on screen and stage. He is best known for The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004) and for twice portraying Gandhi in both Lord Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy (1986), and Jinnah (1998).Sam Dastor has starred in many West End productions with roles such as Ariel in The Tempest, and Orlando in As You Like It. His most recent work has included starring on stage at the Wolsey Theatre in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2016). He has narrated a large catalogue of audiobooks including V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas.

Public Domain (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Sam Dastor is a magician!

The story is wonderful but the performance by Sam Dastor is magical! His performance and the many voices and accents are amazing! I will be looking for more stories performed by him!

terrific story

my favorite book of all time. a great performance by the narrator and one of the best stories ever!

Brilliant catured essence of India confusion.

The spirit of many religions, geographics and history is masterfully conveyed through Kipling's writings. The audible performance is well done

Enjoyable and illuminating

Liked it a lot: a boys coming of age tale mixed with espionage, pilgrimage, religious education and topped off by trying to understand who he is at a philosophical level.

Beautifully Complex

Kipling brings alive all the complexity of colonial India through the fascinating characters of the story!

good story, amazing performance

A great story by Kipling, slow in parts, but breathtaking I'm its scope. It gives a fascinating glimpse of the late British empire in the far east.
The reader is amazing. His ability to different British and Indian accents is truly impressive and add a lot of character to the performance.

Sheer delight

This is a "Boy's Own Adventure" but wonderfully told, an India long gone captured in word painting that was masterly.

This is Rudyard Kipling's best book and it is a masterpiece - in a few words he can describe a scene, a look or a character. I've never been to India but I feel like after listening to this I know what to expect.

For younger boys it is an adventure but it goes far beyond that for adult readers as it works on so many levels.

Sam Dastor, who read The Siege of Krishnapur and didn't do the best of jobs doing so, did a marvellous job of all the characters in this book. It was compelling listening. I loved it and know I shall listen to it again and listen to more Kipling as a result of listening to this book.

A very interesting story!

But I don't have a clue what Kipling was thinking, when he ended the story so oddly. Nonetheless, I was an interesting story, and a unique adventure.
The reading is awesome, which added so much to the story!

A great personalizing of political intrigue

First: the narration was superb. The intonation of the various accents greatly added to the enjoyment of the tail. The accuracy of the story line is impeccable. I believe that Kipling, like Ian Fleming years later, seems to have fictionalized that which he knew as fact. A very great read that gives sense and logic to "The Great Game."

surreal and wonderful

Kipling no doubt was a colonialist, an ardent believer of the white man's superiority (complex), and, if one were to use today's morals, an unapologetic racist.

That aside, Kipling wonderfully captures the nuances of India in his stories (save for a couple of misses like in the train where folks are ignorant of Buddhism). As someone who grew up in India in the 90s I was amazed to realize how some things hadn't changed from Kipling's times. Kipling masterfully captures the diversity and complexity of India which is true even to this day.


Kudos to the narrator for an excellent performance.