Quest for Kim

This book is for all those who love Kim, that masterpiece of Indian life in which Kipling immortalized the Great Game. Fascinated since childhood by this strange tale of an orphan boy's recruitment into the Indian secret service, Peter Hopkirk here explores the many mysteries surrounding Kipling's great novel. He shows that most of the characters - Kim himself, the old Tibetan lama, Colonel Creighton, Mahbub Ali, Lurgan Sahib and the Babu (agent R17) - 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. Although Hopkirk trailed Kim and the lama across India and Pakistan, this is less a travel book than a literary detective story. It is not even essential to have read Kim in order to enjoy it, for Kipling's narrative is carefully sketched in as Hopkirk's quest unfolds. Because its hero is a teenage boy, many people mistakenly believe Kim to be a children's book.