He was a masterful, fabulously engaging writer (and in 1907 the first English-language Nobel laureate). For one thing, you can’t read Kipling without marveling at his wonderful energy and focus and his command of expression. In the past couple of decades, though, his reputation has seen a major uptick. Myopic because, after all, it’s a book about India by an non-Indian, and a guy with a reputation as a strident imperialist to boot.įor many years it was almost vanishingly rare to hear a good word about Kipling in polite literary or political circles. Unfair because it’s 114 years old and because its language and ostensible politics sometimes pinch the modern ear. It’s probably a little myopically unfair to call Rudyard Kipling’s Kim the greatest book about India.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |