A Passage to India, E.M. Forster’s masterpiece, which has remained consistently popular and widely studied in India for eight decades, has also emerged as the most controversial of all his works, to have received both enthusiastic applause and corrosive criticism across geographical and cultural frontiers—since its first publication till date—for varied reasons. The available corpus of criticism on the novel, quite voluminous and often contrapuntal, can reasonably baffle and intrigue the young students.
While keeping in view the need of the general students of our universities the present study aims at a lucid analysis and in-depth study of the book with reference to its various facets. The author who has been teaching the book to university students for nearly three decades has penetrated the text with sensitive insight and scholarly command from the varied angles of the genesis, historical setting, title, themes, structure, characters, narrative technique including symbol, rhythm, language, interterxtual echoes, and imperial and postcolonial discourses, in addition to providing an ‘Introduction’, a ‘Story-outline’, and a detailed ‘Critical summary’ of the entire text, along with a select Bibliography and sample questions. The study will be immensely useful to students, scholars and teachers in the area.
Rama Kundu is a full Professor of English. She has been teaching in the Postgraduate Department of English, Burdwan University, West Bengal, since 1976. She is the author of several books namely, Vision and Design in Hardy’s Fiction, Wrestling With God: Studies in English Devotional Poetry, Anita Desai’s Fire on the Mountain, New Perspectives on British Authors: From William Shakespeare to Graham Greene. Ānandamath O Sāmpradāiktā (on Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay). She has also edited an anthology of research papers on Rabindranath Tagore’s The Home and the World, a collection of essays on Thomas Hardy, two volumes of critical studies on Indian Writing in English, four anthologies of Studies in Women Writers in English, two volumes of critical essays on Salman Rushdie, and recently a festschrift, Widening Horizons: Essays in Honour of Professor Mohit K. Ray, in addition to translating a volume of poems into English—On the Revolving Stage. She has written a large number of research papers published in scholarly journals and anthologies in India and abroad. Professor Kundu has participated and chaired sessions in a large number of National and International Seminars and Conferences and several stints in Europe.
