Published By UK - Nel, US - St Martins Press, Ger - Diana Verlag, Finland - Gummerus, Brazil - Editora Record

In choosing to give us the succeeding adventures of Kipling's Kim, Mr Murari has set his sights high. As well as the excellence of the source, there is ranged against the enterprise the weight and accomplishment of Raj literature in general. But such is the drive of the narrative and such is the author's feeling for his native country, that the reader is borne pleasurably along. When in addition we get the complications of torn loyalties in the lives of the adult Kim and of his emergent country, this becomes a very considerable and entertaining novel. THE INDEPENDENT, London.
-'This novel conjures up a quietly vivid panorama of Indian life'-THE GUARDIAN
Murari's skill lies in his choice of details, psychological details, which act as a trigger that will bring down the whole edifice of the Raj. What is fascinating is the way he tells his story, not by historical facts and dates alone, but by sounds and smells and texture and taste, and of things felt in the blood. INDIAN EXPRESS
-India in the early years of the century provides a gigantic, colourful and wondrous backcloth for Murari's exciting sequel to Kipling's 'Kim'. SUNDERLAND ECHO.
-Murari skilfully blends the stories of two clashing cultures to produce a well-rounded and thought-provoking book. BRISTOL ILLUSTRATED.

EDINBURGH EVENING NEWS interview by John Gibson
TIM Murari could be sitting on a fortune with his new novel, "The Imperial Agent." It's his sequel to Rudyard Kipling's revered picture of British India early this century, "Kim," and according to its author it would make a blockbuster movie, even more impact as a TV mini series.
                  Says Tim, Madras-born and now spending nine months of the year in his native India: "It's a big adventure story, an espionage tale in fact, and with its five or six characters interwoven I feel it would do better on TV than cinema. I've had my ego boosted by some influential people who are suggesting it might make another' Jewel in the Crown.'
Manipulated
                  "You have a Smiley character in control of Kim, still harbouring divided loyalties and love. Kim's now 30, as opposed to the Irish boy spy Kimball O'Hara immortalised by Kipling, and we meet him at the start of the freedom movement in India. Which way is he to go? That's what the reader has to find out. In the original story Kim was very Indian in his upbringing until he was discovered by the colonel character who trained him to spy for Britain. I've taken him on from there and he's still being manipulated by the colonel, your present- day Smiley."
Tim feels his timing with this formidable novel is pretty well ideal.
                  "Kipling was 50 years dead last year and host of Kipling books came out. His copyright was up last January. There's a public who have heard of Kim and a public who haven't heard of either Kim or Kipling, so my novel shouldn't be hard to sell
                  "Hollywood owns the film rights to 'Kim' and when they made the first film in the thirties Kim was played by an American brat and Errol Flynn played a friend of his.
"They re-shot it a few years ago with Peter O'Toole as the Lama and an Indian boy cast as Kim. If they bring my novel to the screen I could visualise Harry Andrews as the colonel, but maybe Harry's too old now.
                  "I wanted to write only one novel about Kim, spanning 1905 to 1922. By the time I got to 1910 I knew I'd need another 500 pages, so it's one novel in two parts. There's a bit of sex in it, but Kipling said that Kim knew all kinds of evil. You couldn't call it steamy and I've woven some Indian mythology into it. The book isn't aimed at one market, it's intended for anybody who craves a good story.
"Rather than write about somebody who's having a nervous breakdown in suburbia, I chose Kipling's creation."

INDIAN EXPRESS interview by Geeta Doctor
WITH his bushy eyebrows and faded blue jeans, Timeri Murari is all set to play the part of the writer as "angry young man".
He doesn't flick an eyelash though, when I ask him what he feels at the normal response to his name, "Murari who?", for certainly his work appears to be almost unknown in India. He smiles in that manner described as faintly quizzical in the best Victorian novels. He doesn't have to justify his intriguing first name which is taken from his ancestral village just off Ranipet, near Madras, nor his work which winged on the tag 'Best-selling', has made its way into nine different languages. Sitting in the pale pastel, cane-and-bamboo comfort of an old Madras house, Murari waits for me to ask my next question. For Murari is first of all a journalist. After studying at McGill University, Canada, he worked for the Guardian at London and then went over to New York, where he now lives part of the time. In the USA, he started doing a series of real-life TV, documentaries based on the lives of newly arrived immigrant communities.
                  Murari then took to roaming the badlands of the Bronx and came up with a police detective novel: The Shooter. 'Cops are great storytellers", he volunteers by way of explanation. None of this, however, really goes to explain how he moved into India next and produced not only the best-seller Taj but also two books of historical fiction, that form part of the same story " that show him to be a writer of strong imaginative fibre. He cites both Norman Mailer and Gabriel Garcia Marquez as possible mentors, but turns to Kipling to borrow a hero, Kim, for his panoramic plunge into a period of Indian history, that is still the province of autobiography, (Nirad Chaudhuri's being the latest example) and liberation theology.
                 'I wanted to know more about recent events in India. A lot has been written from the point of view of the British. That was what was immediately apparent in the course of my research, ...I wanted to re-create the period between 1905 and 1919 and look at it from the point of view of an Indian.
                  "Part of the reason that I took Kim was that I wanted a character who was very special for the British and make him eventually an Indian who would be willing to die for his country. Kim had in him all the ingredients of divided loyalties that made him very interesting for me, I wanted to open him up a bit more."