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."