Customer Reviews

A Passage to India

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I've read and enjoyed several Forster books, but "A Passage to India" tops them all. The plot concerns the arrival in Chandrapore, India of Ms. Quested and her potential mother-in-law, Mrs. Moore. They come to visit Mrs. Moore's son, Ronny, who is engaged to Ms. Quested. Ms. Quested and Mrs. Moore are the typical new arrivals, and they desire to see more of the "real" India than they can see with their fellow Brits, who tend to gather in the state Club and socialize only with each other. They become involved with Dr. Aziz, a local Indian physician, who promises to show them the famous, nearby Marabar caves. Dr. Aziz is solicitous toward the Brits and craves their friendship, but he clearly has negative feelings toward them also.

At the Marabar caves, an incident occurs (or does not occur) to Ms. Quested that alters all of the characters and their town inextricably. There is a trial and a bit of a mystery, but the focus is always on the characters and their conflicts. In particular, the tension between the English and the people of India is beautifully portrayed. The characters are multi-dimensional, as are their motives, which makes for a fascinating read. I found the book to be quite moving and sad - a true classic.

This is book is incredible, and one of my personal favorites. Its beauty is too easily overlooked, because it is so elegantly subtle. Every aspect of the storytelling is masterful: the prose is lush and nuanced, and every character is exquisitely drawn. Drawing from the slimmest of plots, Forster weaves what seems to be an isolated incident into a complex tapestry of emotion. The central focus are the characters, who are sharply realistic and utterly, utterly human. Another aspect that I liked very much is that it takes an era, the British Raj in India, which is otherwise interpreted only with the most hotly colored emotions, and presents it with a marked neutrality, presenting it only through the eyes of the characters. A marvelous read.

E.M. Forsters book "A passage to India" is indeed one of the best books I have ever read in my life. Forster shows great skill in bringing the tragic tale of an attempted friendship between Aziz and Fielding.

The book revolves around what may be termed the secret understanding of the heart. This is an understanding of people, their feelings and their interaction with other humans.

In a story which is not primarily political, Forster makes a political comment on what was happening in India at that time.

The issue of the Marabar caves is not really an issue at all because even Forster says that it doesn't really matter what if anything happened in the caves, because it is the repercussions of what did of didn't happen that are important. I believe that the expedition into the Marabar caves merely amplified the emotions already inherent in the characters, for example Adela Quested tells us that she felt unwell since the teaparty with Fielding which took place long before the journey to the caves.

Forster also presents us with well rounded characters except in the case of the Anglo-Indians, who are presented as tyrannical oppressors, and yet even they aren't all bad as they stand for values like honour and chivalry. What really annoys me about the Anglo-Indians is their high and mighty attitude, and pompous ways.

I feel Forster uses character like Fielding, Moore, Godbole and Aziz to show us about true humanity.

He doesn't pretend to understand India, it is a 'muddle' but through India he brings universal quandries and boundries to light.

I recommend you read and reread this book as it is undoubtedly one of the best in english literature.

I will not summarize the plot of this intricate novel, which is freely available through authoritative sites across the Web.

If you love novels of character and theme, you will love and remember this painstakingly written novel of bigotry and colonialism before Indian independence. The concept which clothes the story: the Caucasian, very proper, very British Miss Quested accuses the Indian, Dr. Aziz, of physical assault in a cave. The facts of the event were literally invisible. The balance of the novel is a clash of cultures, biases and characters, all of which conspire to express "reality."

Forster is methodical in way he prepares his readers for the Event and its aftermath. He writes with the precision of a literary surgeon just as he did in A ROOM WITH A VIEW and HOWARD'S END.

If you'd like explore Forster's writing, this is a fine place to start. Give it a little work and it won't let you down. The author was one of the great masters of the English language and an outspoken adversary of bigotry. Most of us have experienced bias at least once or twice in our lives. For that reason alone, I'd try it.

Forster is also the great exemplar of the modern novel. Few were as consistently aware of form. Few had the ability to infuse raw emotion into such civilized prose.

Go for it.

Britishers Mrs. Moore and her prospective daughter-in-law, Adela Quested, make the arduous journey to India to visit Mrs. Moore's son, Ronny Heslop. He is a magistrate in Chandrapore, India, during the British occupation of that country. The two ladies make the acquaintance of Dr. Aziz, a local doctor who offers them a chance to see the "real India" by visiting the Marabar caves. Hoping to please the British ladies, he plans a wonderfully complicated and expensive journey. However, an unfortunate misunderstanding erupts into a tragic affair that point up the cultural differences and seething anger between the two cultures.

Was Miss Quested attacked by Dr. Aziz in the caves? This question becomes the central issue which propels the plot and lays bare the hostility and polarizing feelings of superiority and inferiority prevalent at the time. The reader is swept into the life of Dr. Aziz as more misunderstandings cause a permanent rift with his dearest friend and gives him a genuine hatred of the English. While the pompous Heslop contends his countrymen are in India to do justice and keep the peace, the appalling behavior on both sides explodes at a trial and lingers long after.

Forster is adept at not taking sides, at showing both the British as well as the Indian side of the issues. In his fair and balanced telling, the reader can alternately sympathize with Dr. Aziz or Miss Quested. Neither wins when the truth is revealed and both are forever scarred by the incident in the Marabar caves.

In 1984, David Lean brought this drama to the big screen and, in my opinion, actually improved on the source material by making the characters more sympathetic and capturing visually the beauty of India. Mrs. Moore and Miss Quested atop an elephant riding to the Marabar caves is a breath-taking scene and one any viewer will long remember.

First of all, I'd like to commend the reviewer G.B. Talovich (in the Spotlight Reviews as I write this) for his analysis of the archetype underpinnings of the novel. It made me reconsider the novel as a whole and appreciate it all the more.

A Passage to India was written in 1924 and it bears similarities to some of Forster's literary contemporaries, most notably Orwell's Burmese Days and the short stories of Somerset Maugham. Here we have India, ancient, diverse, plagued with ancient schisms, a "muddle", under the authoricratic rule of colonial Britain. The British portrayed here conform to the rule: stuffy and prejudiced, with no love for their foreign station, maintaining a thin veneer of the Victorian role - to keep themselves "proper", warding away the dust and sweat and sweltering heat of an exoticism they can never truly understand, nor wish to incorporate. It's all about tennis and tea-time and the Club. As a contrast to these rigid expatriates, Forster introduces two arrivals, Mrs. Moore and Ms. Quested, initially starry-eyed and curious about the subcontinent, willing to taste the culture - if only taste, and nothing more - to satisfy the instinct for romance and adventure. This leads them into contact with the Muslim Dr. Aziz, who promises to show them India and ends up doing so more than any of them wish; "that incident at the Marabar Caves" results in explosively exposing the dichotomy of social conduct and temperament between disparate cultures, the superiority-wound ever-festering beneath the Western mandate to civilize and the East's own long-standing hierarchy establishment.

To wit: "It was, in a new form, the old, old trouble that eats the heart out of every civilization: snobbery, the desire for possessions, creditable appendages; and it is to escape this rather than the lusts of the flesh that saints retreat into the Himalayas. (chapter 26 pg 235, old penguin edition)"

At first I was a bit puzzled by Forster's approach, but as I read on it dawned on me that the author was displaying not just the discomfort and isolation of the British, but that of Aziz as well. As a Muslim, he is forced to inhabit three worlds: that of the dominant Hindu population, that of the snooty colonials and, deep within, that of his own faith and culture, marginalized by sheer population. Victimized as much by his own people as by the judgment-cry of the West, he eventually chooses exile, augmented in the final section `Temple'. The `Author's Voice' character, the atheist and open-minded Fielding, also capitulates to the home-town creed by the end of the novel, sacrificing his freedom for the reward of security, the buffer against the exile's loneliness, and his final meeting with Aziz - in which the earth itself seems to grumble that reconciliation between East and West cannot yet happen - is more powerful because of where these two characters have gone and what they have, in effect, given up due to outward pressures.

A Passage to India is widely regarded as a masterpiece of the 20th century, highlighting the internal conflicts that would, in time, lead to Indian independence, casting a caustic eye to the irrevocable differences endemic to East/West relationships whenever superstition and racism rear their ugly heads... an all too common occurrence. Recommended.

Wow. This book was written in the 1920's. Before Indian independence and before the separation of Hindu and Islam. When read with this knowledge it really is an incredible novel and explains (indirectly) the many differences between the Hindu and Muslim and British occupiers. It's essentially about the interaction of people from different cultures. I watched the David Lean film after reading the book and , although there were small differences, it was an excellend portrayal of the book. Why is it it in top 100 list? For me it's because of Forster's incredible descriptions and the way he paints a picture with these descriptions. Words to be tasted. Words to be scented. Sometimes the absence of description also adds to the mystery that is India. Wow.

A classic that kids shouldn't be assigned to read in 10th grade, as I was. I truly hated this book, didn't understand it at all, at all. The symbolism, the racism, the class system, the whole period of the British raj - it all went right over my head. Then, to discover it in adulthood! Well, it was an awakening. It was as if I'd never read it before, and indeed on most levels, I hadn't. What really happened in the Marabar Caves? Was it an assault? A dream or hallucination? An actual rape? Nothing? A case of mistaken identity? This mystery, unanswered at the end, lies at the heart of A Passage to India. We have Muslims, Hindus, and the British Christians mixing within the society. Dr. Aziz is a good and gentle man, a friendly, open-minded, highly educated Indian who is eventually accused of assaulting a British women - and that sort of thing doesn't go over well with the high-mucky-mucky of the era. According to the political sensitivities of the era (1920s), there's always bound to be trouble when you mix the races within society.
Passage to India presents British colonialism at its worst with a marvelous and deeply-layered cast of characters. This is probably Forster's best book.

Sadly, "A Passage to India" will probably never seem dated, because the racial and religious problems that plagued India nearly a century ago continue to do so today. That's a testament, though, to just how compelling E.M. Forster's novel was and is.

Two English ladies, one young and strong willed and the other her elderly chaperone, visit India with the intent of fully immersing themselves in Indian culture--unlike their compatriots, who segregate themselves from the Indians and relegate them to little more than a slave class. However, during a cave exploration, something inexplicable happens to both of them and they find themselves unhinged from the experience. What follows is a sad story about the clash of two cultures that form immediate and unshakable assumptions about each other.

Forster has been criticized for being somewhat one-sided in his portrayal of the English-Indian conflict, painting the English as belligerent, pompous bullies and the Indians as lovable and continuously wronged. I suppose that criticism is valid to a reader looking for clinical fairness, but as Forster himself is recorded as saying, he was sick of fairness at the time he wrote this novel and composed his story instead from the heart. I can completely understand this sentiment. In any conflict, when one side is so decidedly dominant and thus has all the advantages, fairness seems like an almost irrelevant concept. What Forster has done here is fashioned a compelling story populated by perhaps some of the most psychologically complex characters ever put to the page.

Which is both good and bad. On the one hand, fully trying to understand the inner workings of these characters' minds makes for a very interactive reading session. On the other, Forster makes his characters almost TOO realistically complex, so that I feel that I can't fully understand any of them. Whether intentional on Forster's part or not, this pretty much works overall for the novel, since it is about people who can't fully understand one another. But I would be lying if I didn't say that it also makes the novel at times somewhat frustrating, and ever so slightly dry.

Don't let this criticism overshadow the praise I have for this novel, however. It's a towering achievement of 20th Century literature and deserves the esteem it has won from the literary community.

Set in the British colonial outpost of Chandrapore, this novel begins slowly ,examining the complex relationship between the British community and the native Indian population. The underlying arrogance and prejudice of the club membership Brits is established early on through the eyes of two newly arrived women who are insistent on seeing the "real" India. They have stepped into a situation that they don't quite understand and the delicate balance of the community is nearly shattered by events which occur during an innocent enough day trip to a nearby attraction.

Forster's book is a serious fictional account of how people of different backgrounds can live in close proximity but still have little understanding of each other when the cultural divide is kept intentionally wide. One of the better novels I've read on the subject of British Imperialism.