E. M. Forster's beloved classic and sharp critique of imperialism
A Penguin Classic
When Adela and her elderly companion Mrs. Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, they quickly feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced British community. Determined to explore the "real India," they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial Dr. Aziz, a cultivated Indian Muslim. But a mysterious incident occurs while they are exploring the Marabar caves with Aziz, and the well-respected doctor soon finds himself at the center of a scandal that rouses violent passions among both the British and their Indian subjects. A masterly portrait of a society in the grip of imperialism,
A Passage to India compellingly depicts the fate of individuals caught between the great political and cultural conflicts of the modern world.
The Penguin Classics edition reproduces the authoritative Abinger text and also includes four of Forster's finest essays on India, a chronology of Forster's life and works, suggestions for further reading, explanatory notes, and an illuminating introduction by the distinguished critic and novelist Pankaj Mishra.
For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
E. M. Forster was born in late-Victorian London in 1879 and died in 1970. Educated at King's College, Cambridge, Forster made his name as a writer before the First World War, publishing four well- received novels: Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910) and a collection of short stories, The Celestial Omnibus (1911). For almost fifty years after A Passage to India (1924), Forster ceased publishing fiction. A public intellectual and pungent social critic, Forster championed liberal beliefs, protesting fascism, the British occupation of Egypt and India, communism, Cold War militarism, censorship, anti-Semitism, and racism. His advocacy took many forms. Forster was a pioneer on the BBC's India Service and published influential nonfiction, including Two Cheers for Democracy (1951) and Aspects of the Novel (1927). He experimented with travel writing and biography, and (with Eric Crozier) wrote the libretto for Benjamin Britten's opera Billy Budd (1951). Since the posthumous publication of Maurice (written in 1914, published in 1971) and The Life to Come and Other Stories (1972), Forster has been rediscovered and reappraised as a prophetic writer of queer fiction.
Pankaj Mishra (introduction) writes regularly for
The New Yorker,
The Guardian, the
London Review of Books, and
Bloomberg View, and is the author of
Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race, and Empire;
Age of Anger: A History of the Present;
From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia;
Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond;
An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World; and the novels
Run and Hide and
The Romantics. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he was born in North India and now lives in London.
