History Literature / Kim

In 2008, it received its first AnimatedAdaptation from Italian production companies Creator/MondoTV and [[Creator/{{Rai}} Rai Fiction]]. Tropes in relation to that adaptation go [[WesternAnimation/{{Kim}} here]].

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: In the years before the book was written, a young, light-skinned, blue-eyed Indian man was charged with murder. Around his neck, the police found a leather bag which the man claimed was a charm. When the bag was opened, it proved to contain a birth certificate proving his father was an Irish soldier. The case received a fair bit of publicity, and too many details add up for it not to have been Kipling's source of inspiration.
* WalkingTheEarth: Much of the book is about just travelling around like any other traveller.

* TheChessMaster: Colonel Creighton
* CityOfSpies: Lahore just to start with.
* ComingOfAge
* CoolHorse: What Mahbub Ali deals in
* CoolGun: An ancient cannon [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamzama Zam-Zammah]] in front of the "wonder-house" at Lahore, around which the [[StreetUrchin Street Urchins]] play. Also known as "Kim's Gun" for the benefit of tourists, the cannon (cast in 1762) was an AncestralWeapon of the armies of several Rajahs. As the first paragraph of ''Kim'' explains:
--->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.

* SparedByTheAdaptation: The Lama's previous chela, although [[TheGhost still remains an unseen character]]. In the novel he caught a fever and died. In the movie he abandoned him.

* AudioAdaptation: Had a radio adaptation for ''Radio/LuxRadioTheatre'', with Creator/ErrolFlynn and Creator/DeanStockwell (Kim himself) [[RoleReprisal reprising their roles]].

In 2008, the Italian production companies Creator/MondoTV and [[Creator/{{Rai}} Rai Fiction]] created its first AnimatedAdaptation. Tropes in relation to that adaptation go [[WesternAnimation/{{Kim}} here]].

* MagicalAsian: Teshoo Lama. He charms everyone around him with his wisdom and honesty, be they travellers in a train, a Hindu priest, an English museum caretaker, and even Kim himself. He's on [[TheQuest a quest]] for the River of the Arrow of the Buddha, which is claimed that it can cleanse anybody from sin, and could [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence detach him from the Wheel of Things]]. Kim was already marvelled on first meeting him because he couldn't tell his race or caste, having previously thought he knew them all in the world.

* MagicalAsian: Teshoo Lama. He marvels everyone around him with his wisdom and honesty, be they travellers in a train, a Hindu priest, and even Kim himself. He's on [[TheQuest a quest]] for the River of the Arrow of the Buddha, which is claimed that it can cleanse anybody from sin, and could [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence detach him from the Wheel of Things]]. Kim was already marvelled on first meeting him because he couldn't tell his race or caste, having previously thought he knew them all in the world.

* CrashingThroughTheHarem: Kim falls through a thatched roof and right into a room of harem girls.

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

* SimSimSalabim

In 1950 ''Kim'' was made into a well-received movie starring Creator/DeanStockwell as Kim and Creator/ErrolFlynn in his last great adventure movie as Mahbub Ali.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Isn't Kim a child street vagrant raised by a father who is a drug addicted ShellShockedVeteran? If he lived today he would be taken in by child services (as he would have in the novel, if he had not been so good at avoiding the 19th century Indian version).
** Also Kim does associate with prostitutes etc., at one point getting one of them to help him dye his skin by pretending to plan to seduce a very young girl (at this point, Kim himself is about 13-14 and already apparently familier with seduction tactics) , and at another point it is hinted that his fellow pupils at the school think that Creighton has a directly fatherly interest in him and Kim is his illegitimate son.

* AuthorAvatar: Kim may have been an expression of Creator/RudyardKipling s nostalgia for his boyhood.

** Also Kim does associate with prostitutes etc., at one point getting one of them to help him dye his skin by pretending to plan to seduce a very young girl, and at another point it is hinted that his fellow pupils at the school think that Creighton has a more than fatherly interest in him.

This is one of the most beloved works of Creator/RudyardKipling, published in 1901. The title character is a street urchin named Kimball O'Hara (called Kim throughout the novel) who has been befriended by the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Pathan]] [[IntrepidMerchant horse trader]] and spy Mahbub Ali. He wanders around the streets of the city of Lahore happily, mingling with all the many races, and occasionally running secret errands for Mahbub. He meets Teshoo Lama (usually called the Lama) who is WalkingTheEarth [[SeekerArchetype seeking enlightenment]]. Kim follows him and has adventures over a long period leading all the way to the Himalayas, where he foils a Russian and a French agent. It is left with an open ending as Kim must decide whether to continue as the Lama's disciple or become a full time spy.

This novel is a formless one in plot and depends primarily on character and setting which is not unknown for Creator/RudyardKipling (Kipling's greatest talent was arguably in setting rather than plot). It is one of the first spy novels ever told though it was in fact something of a [[GenreBusting Genre Buster]] because its focus went beyond espionage. Interestingly it captures the feel of RealLife espionage quite well. The actual nature of given missions is seldom revealed, nor is the identity of the enemy they are facing at a given time (with the exception of a Russian expedition in TheShangriLa at the end) and at first Kim doesn't even know who his own side is; which is of course what things would be like for a real spy. One of the books strengths is its beautiful cross section of life in British India.

* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Hurree Chunder Mookerjee.

* MightyWhitey: Subverted in that Kim, who is of British parentage, learns a lot from his European schooling, but also from his adopted homeland and the Lama, and he feels more at home being a native rather than a "Sahib" (word used to call British in India). Kim himself puts it rather snarkily while referring to a British priest.

* ObfuscatingStupidity: Used often enough by Kim and Mahbub Ali, but Hurree Babu is the master of this.

* StreetUrchin: Kim

----

This is one of the most beloved works of Creator/RudyardKipling. The title character is a street urchin named Kimball O'Hara (called Kim throughout the novel) who has been befriended by the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Pathan]] [[IntrepidMerchant horse trader]] and spy Mahbub Ali. He wanders around the streets of the city of Lahore happily, mingling with all the many races, and occasionally running secret errands for Mahbub. He meets Teshoo Lama (usually called the Lama) who is WalkingTheEarth [[SeekerArchetype seeking enlightenment]]. Kim follows him and has adventures over a long period leading all the way to the Himalayas, where he foils a Russian and a French agent. It is left with an open ending as Kim must decide whether to continue as the Lama's disciple or become a full time spy.

** The Lama, as a Tibetan Buddhist and someone more accustomed to using Chinese than e. g. Punjabi, also is very much this, at least at the beginning of the novel, but things change, especially after he meets up with the Sahiba, a fellow Buddhist, if a lapsed one.

* TheRaj: Perhaps the best novel to truly capture what it was really like.

* TheFederation: TheRaj is presented as this.

* GoingNative: Kim can effortlessly go native as both a Hindu and a Muslim in India.

* TheRaj

---

* CityOfSpies: Lahore just to start with

* ComingOfAge

* CoolGun: An ancient cannon in front of the "wonder-house" at Lahore, around which the [[StreetUrchin Street Urchins]] play. Apparently there is a real cannon at Lahore called "Kim's Gun" for the benefit of tourists, on which Kipling based it on. According to ''The Quest For Kim'' by Peter Hopkirk this gun had a romantic history being sort of an AncestralWeapon of the armies of several Rajahs, and had gone on a number of campaigns before it had become a museum piece.

* {{Defictionalization}}: Infamous British Soviet double agent Kim Philby was nicknamed after Kipling's Kim, being a spy originally from India.
** The memory game Lurgan Sahib plays with Kim became known as "Kim's game" in the real world.

** The keeper of the museum or "wonder house" is a portrait of Kipling's father who really was the curator of a museum there.

--> '''Kim:''' The thin fool who looks like a camel says that I am the son of a Sahib...he thinks that once a Sahib is always a Sahib.