Kim by Rudyard Kipling

An action-packed adventure story and also an endearing coming-of-age tale Kim is a classic that has captivated readers for over a century. Set in the teeming streets of colonial India Kipling’s novel tells the story of Kimball O’Hara a young Irish orphan who leads a vagabond existence growing up in the walled city of Lahore. He befriends an old Tibetan lama searching for the mythical River of the Arrow and with him sets out on an incredible journey along the Grand Trunk Road. En route Kim is embroiled in a series of adventures that have him thieving begging and trying his hand at disguises with an eccentric bunch of characters the enigmatic Sahiba of Saharanpur; the mysterious Bengali babu Hurree Chunder Mookherjee and the Pashtun horse-trader Mahbub Ali and is recruited by the British Secret Service to train as a young spy in the Great Game of espionage between Russia and Britain.