Fifty years have passed since Kim enchanted the world with its insight into Indian life. Since then there have been countless books which described and interpreted that teeming land, but none has supplanted Rudyard Kipling's radiant picture, with its people of high and low caste, in the hearts of readers, old and young. As a tale of picaresque adventure, as a pageant and as a social document, Kim is a classic in its own field. It is storytelling at its best, with all the vitality and color and appeal it first offered at the turn of the century.