Deepak Chopra

An example of masterful storytelling that fascinated me growing up. I identified with Kim, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier, because we were both children of the army; my father was an army doctor who had served under Lord Mountbatten. On rereading, the setting of the Afghan Wars in the late Victorian era has chilling implications for today. The book is also a reminder that Kipling’s colonialist perspective didn’t blind him to the teeming human drama of India.