And here's a second nomination, although Jon may object since it's a non-fiction history book about a historical fiction book
...
Mitigating that, perhaps, is the price, which is $1.99 in the US and £1.99 in the UK, at least at the moment - of course we don't know how long those prices will last.
EDIT: I looked at eRiq, and in the US, at least, Quest has been $1.99 since mid-May, so not a short-term sale price, at least...
The Quest for Kim is a title by Peter Hopkirk in which the author traces (as best he can) the real people, places and events that provide the background for Kipling's classic
Kim. I've always enjoyed reading about the "Great Game", both fiction and non-fiction, and Hopkirk also has a number of excellent (IMO) "pure" non-fiction history titles about the period/region. But
Quest is particularly fun (again IMO) due to its ties to
Kim - it's almost like getting two reads in one.
One downside is that you probably would want to have read
Kim before reading this, even if a very long time ago. I had read
Kim many many years ago, before picking up
Quest; found that even with the many years, I remembered enough about
Kim to enjoy
Quest; but then found myself wanting to (and did) go back and re-read
Kim later.
Kim is available for free in our own MR Patricia Clark Mem Library, though, so the issue here would be of time, rather than money.
Here's the blurb about
Quest, which (once more IMO) doesn't really do it justice:
Quote:
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 retraces Kim's footsteps across Kipling's India to see how much of it remains.
To attempt this with a fictional hero would normally be pointless. But Kim is different. For much of this Great Game classic was inspired by actual people and places, thus blurring the line between the real and the imaginary. Less a travel book than a literary detective story, this is the intriguing story of Peter Hopkirk's quest for Kim and a host of other shadowy figures.
|
It has 3.86 stars at Goodreads and 4.0 stars at Kindle US.
Kindle UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Quest-Kim-S...dp/B00713DMTU/
Kindle US:
https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Kim-Pet...dp/B00GW4L0HK/
Kobo US:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/quest-for-kim-1
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...om_search=true