He afterwards took a post on the Sind, Punjab, and Delhi Railway, and his Regiment went home without him. The half-caste woman who looked after him (she smoked opium, and pretended to keep a second-hand furniture shop by the square where the cheap cabs wait) told the missionaries that she was Kim’s mother’s sister but his mother had been nursemaid in a Colonel’s family and had married Kimball O’Hara, a young colour-sergeant of the Mavericks, an Irish regiment. Though he was burned black as any native though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar Kim was white-a poor white of the very poorest. There was some justification for Kim-he had kicked Lala Dinanath’s boy off the trunnions-since the English held the Punjab and Kim was English. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that ‘fire-breathing dragon’, hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror’s loot. He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher-the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

Considered by many as Kipling’s masterpiece, “Kim” is a classic novel of espionage and adventure which helped bring popular attention to the political and diplomatic confrontation between the British Empire and the Russian Empire in Central and Southern Asia at the end of the 19th century. Set against the backdrop of “The Great Game” a political conflict between Russia and Great Britain in central Asia, the novel traces the life of the title character from begging and errand running on the streets of Lahore to his schooling at a top English school in Lucknow, where he is trained in espionage, and ultimately to a government appointment where he himself gets to play in “The Great Game.” Set between the second and third Afghan War, “Kim” presents a vivid portrait of 19th century India. First published in “McClure’s Magazine” between December of 1901 and October of 1901, “Kim” is the story of Kim (Kimball) O’Hara, the orphaned son of a British soldier.

Rudyard kipling kim book