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This is a really good book. Despite having only 50,000 words, it offers a great deal of interesting content. The chapters are not numbered, but the essays that I liked the most and might someday reread are Chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5. The first chapter is the Introduction by Harold Bloom, which is 3000 words long and quite good. Chapter 2, "Kim: The Process of Becoming" by Vasant A. Shahane, is 6000 words and excellent. Chapter 4, "The Pleasures of Kim" by Irving Howe, is 4700 words and also excellent. Chapter 5, "Kipling’s Kim" by Angus Wilson, is 5500 words and excellent as well. There are other chapters too, such as "The Kim that Nobody Reads" by Margaret Peller Feeley, which is 6800 words and interesting. "The Lost Paradise of Rudyard Kipling" by Constance Scheerer is 4100 words and okay. "Kipling’s Triumph: The Double Boyhood of Kimball O’Hara" by Robert R Moss is 5900 words and interesting. "Orality in Kipling’s Kim 101" by David H. Stewart is 3600 words and interesting. However, "Disorientation and Commitment in the Fiction of Empire: Kipling and Orwell" by David Seed, which is 4200 words, is not so good. Overall, this book has a mix of excellent, good, and interesting essays that make it a worthwhile read.
