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A Passage to India
by
E. M. Forster's exquisitely observed novel about the clash of cultures and the consequences of perception, set in colonial India
Among the greatest novels of the twentieth century and the basis for director David Lean’s Academy Award–winning film, A Passage to India unravels the growing racial tension between Indians, uneasy at best with colonial power, and the British, l ...more
Among the greatest novels of the twentieth century and the basis for director David Lean’s Academy Award–winning film, A Passage to India unravels the growing racial tension between Indians, uneasy at best with colonial power, and the British, l ...more
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Paperback, 75th Anniversary, 362 pages
Published
by A Harvest Book/Harcourt, Inc.
(first published 1924)
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“Adventures do occur, but not punctually. Life rarely gives us what we want at the moment we consider appropriate.”
Illustrations from the Folio Edition by Ian Ribbons.
Adela Quested and Mrs. Moore have journeyed to India with the intention of arranging a marriage between Adela and Mrs. Moore’s son Ronny Heaslop. He is the British magistrate of the city of Chandrapore. He is imperial, much more so than when Adela knew him in England.
”India had developed sides of his character that she had nev ...more

Illustrations from the Folio Edition by Ian Ribbons.
Adela Quested and Mrs. Moore have journeyed to India with the intention of arranging a marriage between Adela and Mrs. Moore’s son Ronny Heaslop. He is the British magistrate of the city of Chandrapore. He is imperial, much more so than when Adela knew him in England.
”India had developed sides of his character that she had nev ...more

Make no mistake. This, to me, will always be Forster's magnum opus even though I am yet to even acquaint myself with the synopses of either Howards End or Maurice. Maybe it is the handicap of my Indian sentimentality that I cannot remedy on whim to fine-tune my capacity for objective assessment. But strip away a colonial India from this layered narrative. Peel away the British Raj too and the concomitant censure that its historical injustices invite. And you will find this to be Forster's unambi
...more

In a rather ironic piece of narration, E.M. Forster sums up my opinion of this book perfectly:
“Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.”
Indeed, this book was so terribly dull. Ordinary, bland and mundane are all words that spring to mind. Nothing happened other than a single piece of melodrama that somehow managed to dominate the b ...more
“Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.”
Indeed, this book was so terribly dull. Ordinary, bland and mundane are all words that spring to mind. Nothing happened other than a single piece of melodrama that somehow managed to dominate the b ...more

A Passage to India seems a bolder statement on Colonialism and racism than ever. The Indians are thoughtful and droll, speaking about the trouble making friends with Englishmen, who become less personable the longer they are in India. The British seem to a man all about keeping the Indian down, of holding the colony by force. The writing is beautiful. I just finished E.L. Doctorow's The March, which errs on the purplish side at times. There's no such overwriting here. Even when one reads more sl
...more

Adela Quested a plain looking young , affable and naive English school teacher travels to distant India in the early 1920's accompanied by the elderly , kind Mrs. Moore (maybe her future mother-in-law) a widow twice and see the real country, more important to decide if she will marry Mrs. Moore's son the magistrate, of the unimportant city of Chandrapore disillusioned Ronny Heaslop ( he dislikes Indians now)...Conditions are very uneasy in India the natives hate the British rulers and seek indep
...more

THIS IS AN ANTICOLONIAL NOVEL BUT
Forster deals blows right and left in this novel and modern readers will grimace when they read the intricately exposed racism of the British in India (the lofty British ladies learning just enough Urdu to be able to give instructions to the servants); but alas, some of the generalisations about Indians will jar as the narrator throws out stuff like
Like most Orientals, Aziz overrated hospitality, mistaking it for intimacy, and not seeing that it is tainted with ...more
Forster deals blows right and left in this novel and modern readers will grimace when they read the intricately exposed racism of the British in India (the lofty British ladies learning just enough Urdu to be able to give instructions to the servants); but alas, some of the generalisations about Indians will jar as the narrator throws out stuff like
Like most Orientals, Aziz overrated hospitality, mistaking it for intimacy, and not seeing that it is tainted with ...more

In a novel with the line “a perfectly adjusted organism would be silent” it is no surprise that the centre of this cloud of writing is the idea of the difficulty, or the possible impossibility of communication and direct connection between people.
Instead understanding has to be intuitive and incommunicable, Mrs Moore knows nothing has happened but can’t convince her son, how she knows or how Professor Godbole knows about her and the wasp is unclear and if we don’t like telepathy as an answer the ...more
Instead understanding has to be intuitive and incommunicable, Mrs Moore knows nothing has happened but can’t convince her son, how she knows or how Professor Godbole knows about her and the wasp is unclear and if we don’t like telepathy as an answer the ...more

‘The past! the infinite greatness of the past!’ thrilled Walt Whitman in ‘A Passage to India’. A quarter of a century later, Forster borrowed Whitman's title, but with a very different mood in mind. In place of the American's wild-eyed certainties, Forster gives us echoes and confusion; instead of epic quests of the soul, there is only an eternal impasse of personal and cultural misunderstanding.
Animals and birds are half-seen, unidentified; the landscape is a featureless blur; motives are illog ...more
Animals and birds are half-seen, unidentified; the landscape is a featureless blur; motives are illog ...more

I read A Passage To India for my Completist Book Club on Goodreads. This is a book that I may have never even heard of if it was not for that group. For those who are curious, it is a club that chooses books from must read lists to read each month. Because of this club, I have been able to find some interesting, some challenging, and, sadly, even some boring books that I cannot figure out why they are must reads. But, whatever the case, I am always glad to be a part of the group because it has r
...more

May 10, 2017
Julie
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
the-british-invasion
It's a Saturday evening, and you and your significant other have just arrived at an outdoor barbecue, hosted by your sweetheart's employer.
As you step out on to the patio, you do a quick visual sweep of the social atmosphere. At first glance, it looks as though the party is dominated by your partner's coworkers, which is unfortunate, as they are all metallurgists. That's right. They're all metallurgists, and you're. . . well, you're you.
You've got your fingers crossed that someone's significant ...more
As you step out on to the patio, you do a quick visual sweep of the social atmosphere. At first glance, it looks as though the party is dominated by your partner's coworkers, which is unfortunate, as they are all metallurgists. That's right. They're all metallurgists, and you're. . . well, you're you.
You've got your fingers crossed that someone's significant ...more

So easy going - and then wham!
Quentin Tarantino could learn a lot from E M Forster. He'd learn that there's no need to pile on the menace in the early stages. The shock, when it comes is much more effective if the reader/viewer has been led into thinking all is ordinary and relatively safe. Forster is a master story teller, and a true philosopher as well. ...more
Quentin Tarantino could learn a lot from E M Forster. He'd learn that there's no need to pile on the menace in the early stages. The shock, when it comes is much more effective if the reader/viewer has been led into thinking all is ordinary and relatively safe. Forster is a master story teller, and a true philosopher as well. ...more

Feb 12, 2019
Piyangie
rated it
liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
brittish-lit,
my-library
A Passage to India is set in the time the British ruled India. Forster wrote this book after visiting India and having first hand seen the real relationship of the ruling British and the ruled natives. Since he had personal experience, it was easy for him to paint a true and accurate picture of how the British administrators governed the natives. First and foremost, Forster saw it was to be oppressive; he was not happy with the way the natives were treated. He observed a difference in the Brit
...more

So there's this book, and every summary you read says it's about what happens one afternoon in one of these caves. So you pick up the book and begin to read. There's the caves, and there's the event, and as you turn the final page you realize you have never been so happily deceived, for this book has been one of the most memorable tales of a friendship you have read. Is it wrong that in future you may consider reading only Part III? It begins with a collar stud, and somewhere in the middle there
...more

The more I explore E.M. Forster’s books, the more I come to realize that he was a man who held very unconventional views for his days. In “A Room with a View”, he discussed the independence of spirit of women, in “Howards’ End”, the subtle ways the class division separates people and in “A Passage to India”, he expresses very anti-colonialist views about what was once the jewel of the crown: British-occupied India.
Racial tensions and prejudices turn a misunderstanding into quite a drama. The por ...more
Racial tensions and prejudices turn a misunderstanding into quite a drama. The por ...more

When I first encountered this book,it felt like a chore. It was required reading for class,and had to be crammed.
Years later,I saw David Lean's magnificent film adaptation.It was a superb effort,which quickly became one of my favourite films.I can watch it again and again.
When this book was written,the end of British rule in the sub-continent was still decades away. Unusually for an Englishman of that era,Forster depicts the growing resentment against the British Raj in India. George Orwell's Bu ...more
Years later,I saw David Lean's magnificent film adaptation.It was a superb effort,which quickly became one of my favourite films.I can watch it again and again.
When this book was written,the end of British rule in the sub-continent was still decades away. Unusually for an Englishman of that era,Forster depicts the growing resentment against the British Raj in India. George Orwell's Bu ...more

Jul 12, 2011
Shovelmonkey1
rated it
it was ok
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
people looking for literary nytol
Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by:
1001 books list
Written in 1924 this so called literary classic and 1001 book is set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the slow move towards Independence. This book has been showered with awards - I gave my copy of a good shake just to see if any of the awards had got stuck between the pages - although personally the only award I would be inclined to hand out for E.M Forster's most famous novel would be the highly coveted shovelmonkey1 pillow award for producing an epic snooze fest.
I read this book w ...more
I read this book w ...more

This is so far my favorite book by E.M. Forster. I tried A Room with a View first and gave that three stars. This one, set in India probably about a decade or two before independence, mirrors British colonialism and the multicultural diversity of the land. This one has much more meat on its bones. Religion, multi-ethnicity, colonialism, imperialism, the dogged belief in the superiority of the rulers over the ruled and most specifically how very difficult it is to communicate over cultural barrie
...more

This tediously long 362 page story set in a 1924 British ruled India begins when an "old" (twice married) Mrs. Moore brings a plain freckled-faced Adela Quested on a visit to meet her son Ronny Heaslop, the City Magistrate, with hopes of marriage. Mrs. Moore soon befriends a local Indian and Surgeon, Dr. Aziz (view spoiler) causing a political uproar.
At this point in the novel.....a little over 160 page
...more
Sep 16, 2018
Bradley
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
2018-shelf,
traditional-fiction
The one word that kept coming to mind as I read this and even after I finished, is: "Remarkable".
Honestly, even if I had never been told that E. M. Forster is one of those legendary greats, as mysterious as he is beloved, I would point to his writing and say the same damn thing.
I'm genuinely awed.
Beyond simple, clear prose, I was enraptured by the humor and odd observations in the dialogues, the irony of Colonial England ladies wanting to see "The Real India", or the great way that every single ...more
Honestly, even if I had never been told that E. M. Forster is one of those legendary greats, as mysterious as he is beloved, I would point to his writing and say the same damn thing.
I'm genuinely awed.
Beyond simple, clear prose, I was enraptured by the humor and odd observations in the dialogues, the irony of Colonial England ladies wanting to see "The Real India", or the great way that every single ...more

Can there ever be friendship between the colonizer and colonized? Individuals from each group? Can that trust last? Can it flourish? What happens when events put it under stress?
Forster has no easy answers in this book, as he dissects British colonial rule in India, and its impact on Indians and the British who have come there expressly to rule over India.
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to th ...more
Forster has no easy answers in this book, as he dissects British colonial rule in India, and its impact on Indians and the British who have come there expressly to rule over India.
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to th ...more

Set against the back drop of the British Raj this books explores the question of whether there could ever be a real bond of friendship and brotherhood between people belonging to two different nations, religion, culture. Although published in 1924, this book is suggestive of the mood which eventually led to the events of 1947 in the Sub Continent.

In some ways it's hard to believe that this was published in 1924, given the prescience Forster demonstrates in relation to the future of the British Raj. Towards the end of the novel, one of the central characters, Dr Aziz, effectively predicts that Indians will throw out the British when England is is involved in another war in Europe and articulates - albeit not in so many words - the need for Indians to identify as Indians rather than as members of their individual religious communities in o ...more

"The sky settles everything - not only climates and seasons but when the earth shall be beautiful. By herself she can do little - only feeble outbursts of flowers. But when the sky chooses, glory can rain into the Chandrapore bazaars or a benediction pass from horizon to horizon. The sky can do this because it is so strong and so enormous. Strength comes from the sun, infused in it daily; size from the prostrate earth. No mountains infringe on the curve. League after league the earth lies flat,
...more

I read this one shortly after I inhaled A Room with a View. I was way, way too young to understand everything that was going on in the story, but the writing was lovely, and I did get the gist of all the injustice, corruption and racism that was Colonialism. I remember thinking: when will humans stop conquering each other and just live in peace? But, then, of course, I had yet to learn the bitter fact that money makes the world go around. Time for a reread? I think there is a film adaptation of
...more

The India of Forster’s imagination is a vast, incoherent land of hostile earth and oppressive air; the weather, inhospitable to human life; the sun, a burning, penetrating force that crushes the soul; in the distance, sand, fields, bushes, more sand, more bushes, all indecipherable, all impenetrable to human reason. The mind boggles at the immensity and confusion of India, at the distant mountains, at the strange religions, at the endless tracts of land blending with the gray and threatening sky
...more

This book is a classic, but its motifs of culture clash and racialism strike an unfortunate chord in current times.
*****
The plot revolves around an Englishwoman who wrongly accuses a Muslim Indian doctor of attempting to assault her while they're visiting mystical Indian caves. Set in a time when the British controlled India, the book has several sub-themes.

One is the condescending attitude and behavior of the Brits toward the Indian people and the consequent mistrust and dislike the Indians f ...more

To some degree this novel has dated because the world it depicts no longer exists - British empire India. This means it has unintentionally become historical fiction. Sexual politics too have changed since Forster's day and I'm not sure too many novelists nowadays would pivot a novel on an overwrought woman falsely accusing a man of molesting her. There's a danger here of using one prejudice to condemn another - a sexist prejudice against women to condemn racism. However, Forster is too astute a
...more

4.5
"India likes gods."
"And Englishmen like posing as gods.”
I first read this classic back when I was 18 and remember liking it. The main plot had remained in my memory but not much else. Re-reading it now in my 40s, I’m amazed how this text is so relevant to today’s sociological and indeed political landscape.
Forster’s novel, published in 1924, dealt with imperialism, showing the interactions between British and Indians in the fictional city of Chandrapore. As you expect, most of the English b ...more
"India likes gods."
"And Englishmen like posing as gods.”
I first read this classic back when I was 18 and remember liking it. The main plot had remained in my memory but not much else. Re-reading it now in my 40s, I’m amazed how this text is so relevant to today’s sociological and indeed political landscape.
Forster’s novel, published in 1924, dealt with imperialism, showing the interactions between British and Indians in the fictional city of Chandrapore. As you expect, most of the English b ...more

“A Passage to India” is most of all a story of a fragile friendship which carefully treads the cultural differences. It’s a story of tiny misunderstandings and silly errors and their dramatic consequences.
Adela Quested who arrives in colonial India with the best and purest intentions ends up causing irreparable damage to the reputation of an Indian doctor Dr Aziz, and in consequence ruins his friendship with Cyril Fielding, an English teacher.
Adela is not so much a heroine but a catalyst of th ...more
Adela Quested who arrives in colonial India with the best and purest intentions ends up causing irreparable damage to the reputation of an Indian doctor Dr Aziz, and in consequence ruins his friendship with Cyril Fielding, an English teacher.
Adela is not so much a heroine but a catalyst of th ...more
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Edward Morgan Forster, generally published as E.M. Forster, was an novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. His humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect".
He had five ...more
He had five ...more
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“Adventures do occur, but not punctually.”
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“Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.”
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