A Passage to India: A Literary Classic

by E. M. Forster

Overview

Among the greatest novels of the twentieth century, A Passage to India, E.M. Forster's exotic and emotive masterpiece, poses a listener serious questions about preconceptions over race, creed, sex, religion and truth. Set in the era of The British Raj in India, the stunning narrative presents a complex and unsettled society through the voices and innermost thoughts of its many magnetic characters.The Story: Adela Quested travels to India with her chaperone Mrs. Moore, on the premise of deciding whether to marry Mrs. Moore's son Ronny Heaslop, the city magistrate. Finding her India very disappointingly English, Adela jumps at the chance to travel to the distant Marabar Caves with Aziz, a charismatic young Indian doctor.When Adela is subjected to an attempted assault in one of the caves, Dr. Aziz is arrested and tried in court. The volatile situation forces British India's cracks to widen into chasms, although bridges of hope are found in some open-minded British characters like the logical college principal Mr. Fielding.Forster's East-meets-West novel, in tackling the prejudices in India at the time of the British Raj, is as relevant today as when first published in 1924.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788835362340
Publisher:	Diamond Book Publishing
Publication date:	01/23/2020
Series:	E. M. Forster Collection , #3
Sold by:	StreetLib SRL
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	160,311
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

E. M. Forster was one of the major novelists of the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in 1879 and educated at Cambridge. His other novels include A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India. He died in 1970.

Paul B. Armstrong is Professor of English and former Dean of the College at Brown University. He was previously a professor and a dean at the University of Oregon and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has also taught at the University of Copenhagen, Georgia Institute of Technology, the Free University of Berlin, the University of Virginia, and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. He is the author of How Literature Plays with the Brain: The Neuroscience of Reading and Art; Play and the Politics of Reading: The Social Uses of Modernist Form; Conflicting Readings: Variety and Validity in Interpretation; The Challenge of Bewilderment: Understanding and Representation in James, Conrad, and Ford; and The Phenomenology of Henry James. He is editor of the Norton Critical Edition of E. M. Forster’s Howards End and of the fourth and fifth Norton Critical Editions of Heart of Darkness.

Date of Birth:

January 1, 1879

Date of Death:

June 7, 1970

Place of Birth:

London

Place of Death:

Coventry, England

Education:

B. A. in classics, King's College, Cambridge, 1900; B. A. in history, 1901; M.A., 1910

What People are Saying About This

Margaret Drabble

A Passage to India is one of the great books of the twentieth century and has had enormous influence. We need its message of tolerance and understanding now more than ever. Forster was years ahead of his time, and we ought to try to catch up with him.

Editorial Reviews

A single reading of A Passage to India settles the question. Mr. E. M. Forster is indubitably one of the finest novelists living in England today, and A Passage to India is one of the saddest, keenest, most beautifully written ironic novels of the time. . . . [It] is both a challenge and an indictment. It is also a revelation. -- Books of the Century; New York Times review, August 1924

Herbert S. Gorman

Du Bois's 1903 classic is one of many large-print standards being released by Transaction. Other new titles in the series include Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy (ISBN 1-56000-523-8), Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (ISBN 1-56000-517-3), H.G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau (ISBN 1-56000-515-7), Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (ISBN 1-56000-507-8), E.M. Forster's A Passage to India (ISBN 1-56000-507-6), and Scott Fitzgerald's The Ice Palace and Other Stories (ISBN 1-56000-511-4). These are available in a mixture of paperback and hardcovers, with prices ranging from $17.95 to $24.95.

Library Journal

A Passage to India is one of the great books of the twentieth century and has had enormous influence. We need its message of tolerance and understanding now more than ever. Forster was years ahead of his time, and we ought to try to catch up with him.” –Margaret Drabble

“The crystal clear portraiture, the delicate conveying of nuances of thought and life, and the astonishing command of his medium show Forster at the height of his powers.” –The New York Times

“[Forster is] a supreme storyteller . . . The novel seems to me more completely ‘achieved’ than anything else he wrote.” –from the new Introduction by P. N. Furbank

From the Publisher