A Passage to India
About this ebook
The novel begins with the arrival of a young British teacher named Adela Quested and her friend Mrs. Moore in India. When Adela visits a mosque, she is approached by Dr. Aziz, a young Muslim physician, who accosts her before noticing her respect and understanding of local customs. At a party arranged by a local tax collector, who has invited a group of Indians out of curiosity, Fielding, a college principal, invites Dr. Aziz to a tea party with Adela and Mrs. Moore. There, they make plans to visit the Marabar caves, but are interrupted by Ronny Heaslop, who is to be engaged to Adela. When the day of the journey arrives, only Adela and Mrs. Moore are able to make the trip, and Dr. Aziz accompanies them alone. At the caves, Adela is frightened by a strange echo and stumbles before convincing herself that Dr. Aziz has assaulted her. The ensuing trial divides the fictional city of Chandrapore along racial lines, exposing the prejudices and tensions that dominate life during the British Raj. A Passage to India explores themes of romance, friendship, race, and custom while critiquing the British conquest of India and illuminating the rise of the Indian independence movement.
With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.
About the author
E.M. Forster (1879-1970) was an English novelist. Born in London to an Anglo-Irish mother and a Welsh father, Forster moved with his mother to Rooks Nest, a country house in rural Hertfordshire, in 1883, following his father’s death from tuberculosis. He received a sizeable inheritance from his great-aunt, which allowed him to pursue his studies and support himself as a professional writer. Forster attended King’s College, Cambridge, from 1897 to 1901, where he met many of the people who would later make up the legendary Bloomsbury Group of such writers and intellectuals as Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and John Maynard Keynes. A gay man, Forster lived with his mother for much of his life in Weybridge, Surrey, where he wrote the novels A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature sixteen times without winning, Forster is now recognized as one of the most important writers of twentieth century English fiction, and is remembered for his unique vision of English life and powerful critique of the inequities of class.
