Beyond East and West. The meaning and significance of Kim’s Great Game

The essay investigates Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim (1901) with particular attention to the historical background of the so-called Great Game, the cold war between Russians and English. This perspective challenges current readings of the novel, according to which Kim relinquishes his Indian identity in order to become a sahib. Kim undergoes a parallel education in Western practice and Eastern values, which allows him to become a far completer man than any of the characters deployed by the novel. Buddhism plays a key role, as it represents the metaphor of collective and private spirituality rather than a cultural stereotype, thus resembling the intelligence activity, which, in this case, is considered as a tool to access an alternative and hidden truth.