A Passage To India

“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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 an [...]

‘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 a [...]

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.

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decisi [...]

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)[ who is ultimately accused of attacking Adela while touring the Marabar Caves (hide spoiler)] causing a political uproar.At this point in the novela little over 160 pages, I [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

"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, [...]

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 E [...]

‎دوستانِ گرانقدر، این کتاب که از سه بخش کلی و 37 فصل تشکیل شده است، یکی از پرفروشترین کتبِ انگلستان میباشد و به گونه ای نشان دهندهٔ قدرت و روابط استعماری غرب و نژاد پرستی میباشد که <فورستر> مسائل استعماری را در قالبِ داستان بیان نموده است‎داستان از آنجایی جان میگیرد که پیرز [...]

“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 [...]

الهند بلد برائحة البخور وطعم التوابل. بلد اﻹنسجام والمتناقضات. أكثر من مليار شخص يتحدثون بأكثر من عشرين لغة ويعتنقون مايربو عن 6 أديان.يجمعون بين التسامح والتعصب، المسالمة والمقاومة، السذاجة والنباهة.لا يمكن أن أذكر هذه الرواية دون أن تعرج ذاكرتي على أيام دراستها في الكلية [...]

This book is a classic peace of literature. It describes the differences in the western mindset and the eastern way of thought. It shows how there are similarities in the two cultures of England and India. There are marked differences in the religeons of Hindoism, Budism, Islam, Christianity and intellectualism. I recommend this book highly to all.Enjoy and Be Blessed.Diamond

3.5 stars rounded up because I recognize the importance of this work as part of the literary canon I just didn't love it. This is my 3rd book by E.M. Forster and my least favorite. I had a hard time getting into this. To be honest I found the beginning to be a bit of a slog and if I hadn't been reading this as part of a challenge I may not have finished it. BUT, I'm really glad I did because it all comes together nicely in the end. I listened to the audio which was a good choice for me. It pulle [...]

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 s [...]

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. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what the novel is, exactly. It’s an exceedingly flexible and fluid form. The novel can accommodate historical behemoths like War and Peace, philosophical exercises like The Brothers Karamazov, wacky experiments like Ulysses, and mythical adventures like [...]

When I first picked up this book, I was 13, and expecting to be insulted by some white guys going on about how barbaric my culture and history were and how the magnanimous British civilized us all. I was, thankfully, wrong.It follows Mr Fielding, Miss Adela, and Mrs Moor as they come to tour India. They are shown about by Dr Aziz, a poor Muslim, and Adela's fiance Mr Moor. The basic storyline is one of Adela and Mrs Moor touring India, but then Adela eventually convicts Dr Aziz of sexual harassm [...]

Chandrapore, India during the British Raj in the 1920s. This is about a British young woman, Adela Quested falsely accusing an Indian doctor, Dr. Aziz of attempted rape. During the trial, Adela withdrew her lawsuit and admitted her mistake. The false accusation, the trial and the retraction further divided the nation between the white colonizers and the dark-skinned natives. "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet"" wrote Rudyard Kipling in his 1889-first published po [...]

With everything going on this week, I can't help but think that this novel is still timely and relevant after all these years. The book had a bit of a slow start for me. However, it was important for the author to fully describe exactly what life was like in British-controlled India, from where they lived to how they lived to who they interacted with and under what circumstances they were allowed to do so. Rampant racism and religious intolerance didn't only occur between the British and the Ind [...]

I read this book right after my first trip to India, and it offered both a moving story and an engaging historical account of the country's history. It tells the story of British and Indian people who meet in Chandrapore. Something happens (or does it?) and their friendship is thrown into disarray to put it mildly. If you have ever seen The Jewel in the Crown, this story will definitely remind you of that one, though the latter was published about forty years after this one. I found Forster's st [...]

‘A Passage to India’ is E.M Forster’s magnum opus, the novel which combined his febrile artistic vision and fascination with India. Some of Forster’s depictions of India are wonderful and he is able to capture the humidity, the maleficent mugginess of the Indian atmosphere to outsiders;“She watched the moon, whose radiance stained with primrose the purple of the surrounding sky. In England the moon had seemed dead and alien; here she was caught in the shawl of the night together with t [...]

I thoroughly enjoyed A Passage to India and am now officially a Forster fan. Frankly, I'm not certain how I made it this far through my education without ever picking him up. I can't add much to what's already been written about this book, but I'll mention a few impressions anyway.Forster tells a great story with enviable economy and style. Like a work of impressionist art, A Passage to India is superficially enjoyable, but the real treasure is found in what's not there. Rich, beautiful detail l [...]

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 [...]

A Passage to India is a character study of people with biases, beliefs and prejudices. The setting just happens to be before independence when the book was actually written. And for me, it was really surprising that the book had taken a more pro-indian stance without villifying the British. Dr.Aziz is a moderate who toes the line with the British while embracing his faith and held in esteem by the society. His world changes when he encounters Mrs.Moore, the mother of the collector who treats him [...]