Kim Audiobook By Rudyard Kipling cover art

Kim

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Kim

By: Rudyard Kipling
Narrated by: Sam Dastor
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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.
Classics Middle East British Fiction
Coming-of-age Adventure • Cultural Diversity • Exceptional Voice Acting • Vivid Characters • Spiritual Journey

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Kipling is problematic insofar as his praise of imperialism was then, and is now, ethnocentric. Kim harbors this perspective, but is not guided by it. The book is a superbly picturesque yarn and a mediocre spy novel that is ultimately an engaging anthropological account of the subcontinent. (Kipling’s parents were museum curators). The greatest shortcoming of the novel is that, dispute Kipling’s adult contemporary readers, Kim is YA fiction - characters are either flawless or hapless,most are decoration and all are flat - not to mention the teenage protagonist and the quest plot. And therein is its value, if you want to understand why we find late Victorian era perspectives so loathsome look no further than this evidence of their arrested development. Now here’s the dig: Kim is not a far cry from modern classics like Life of Pi, travelog instagram accounts or a food documentary in some far flung place - religious pluralism, lush setting, and reverence of food are major themes in Kim. Then as now, people saturate themselves with titillating content void of any interrogation of the human condition and ask why things feel so meaningless and bleak.

Anthropology as YA novel

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Nothing to criticize. I have no idea how many times I’ve listened to it, I just pick whatever spot and immerse myself in Kipling’s genius.

One of my all time favorites. I love the book and i love the narrator. Pick any superlative that you like.

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A fantastic book that is a timeless classic of the anthology of the western understanding of rural Indian life. I found it to be very I intriguing and worthwhile to comprehend and have gotten through. I highly recommend this book.

A really great book

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Classic story encompassing the multifaceted cultures of England and India told with Kipling’s unique perspective. A difficult story to narrate, due to the various accents, handled magnificently.

Classic story, monumental narration

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I was transported to time and place of Kim in a way that few books do. I feel that I have seen the plains and mountains of India,walking with Kim and his holy man. Kipling’s sympathetic descriptions of the land and people of the country of his birth shine through.

Great literature transports the reader

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