“Kim” (post 1) by Rudyard Kipling (post 4): In a novel of detailed description, Kim is referred to as a boy, but his age is not clearly given.

Most reviewers either ignore the protagonist’s specific age or jump to the conclusion that he is thirteen, based on this in Chapter 3:

“Had Kim been at all an ordinary boy, he would have carried on the play; but one does not know Lahore city, and least of all the fakirs by the Taksali Gate, for thirteen years without also knowing human nature” (1, p. 44).

However, back in Chapter 1, the third-person narrator had said that Kim, as a “three-year-old baby” (1, p. 4), had been under the care of his late father. And certainly, Kim had not known the fakirs by the Taksali Gate for those three years.

I am still reading Kim and will reserve judgment. But since, in childhood, a few years one way or the other is significant, this vagueness about Kim’s age needs explanation. Maybe I will conclude that Kim is thirteen and the ambiguous way it is stated was inadvertent. Or maybe it will bear on the issue of identity.

1. Rudyard Kipling. Kim [1901]. Edited by Zohreh T. Sullivan. New York, W.W. Norton, 2002.

Note (added January 7, 2017): Kipling’s error is most easily explained by the fact that he had lived in Lahore as an adult—http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/29/travel/lahore-as-kipling-knew-it.html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print—and so he learned about life there for the full time he was there (whereas, Kim could not have learned about life for the full time he was there, because part of that time he was a baby).