Jane Austen is one of England’s most enduring and skilled novelists. With her wit, social precision, and unerring ability to create some of literature’s most charismatic and believable heroines, she mesmerises her readers as much today as when her novels were first published. This selection of Jane Austen’s earliest writing remained unpublished during her lifetime. The title story was written before she was 15, while the other stories were completed before she was 17.

Two men — a boy who grows into early manhood and an old ascetic priest, the lama — are at the center of the novel. A quest faces them both. Born in India, Kim is nevertheless white, a sahib. While he wants to play the Great Game of Imperialism, he is also spiritually bound to the lama. His aim, as he moves chameleon-like through the two cultures, is to reconcile these opposing strands, while the lama searches for redemption from the Wheel of Life.