Customer Reviews
A classic novel 
2008-07-01
"A Passage to India" left me a little dissapointed. It starts so promissing, so unusual. It takes you to a different world and different time and you expect a fine journey. But somehow as the story progresse I was still waiting for some more excitment, more interesting characters, developing of deeper feeling. But unfortunately I never found it in this book. The language, the discriptions of India are beautiful. But I expected so much more from it! It's like those Marabar caves around which the plot revolves: you see them from far away, think about them, find them beautiful, but when you come to visit them they are just caves with nothing to make them special.
There was nothing special for me in this book, except that everything in it happened in India. And I can understand why so many readers are struggling through it.
The major plot is flat, the characters are plain and uninteresting, they look like cartoon caricatures sometimes. There are a lot of possibilities to make this story shine like a real gem stone. But Forster didn't use any of them. Though I appreciate his idea, his wonderful work over the details and mastering the dialoges.
A classic about cultures colliding 
2008-03-15
A Passage to India is a complicated novel about British imperialism in India in the 1920s, and about the relationship between the natives and the British as those two cultures collide.
The story revolves around several characters: Adela Quested, a young woman come to India to marry a government official; her potential future mother-in-law, Mrs. Moore; Dr. Aziz, a local doctor who becomes friends with these ladies, until something shocking happens one day on an outing that changes things forever; and Cecil Fielding, another member of the expatriate community.
In some respects, A Passage to India hasn't aged all that well. I also found my attention wandering in some places. But still, it's a well-written novel about what happens when East meets West.
There is beauty here. 
2008-03-06
First of all, I should say that as I grow older I'm learning that everything I read more than five years should probably not be included in the list of books I've read. I first read A Passage to India in 1994. I know this because in my quasi obsession, through most of the nineties, to catch up on reading the important books years I had never read, I wrote the dates at which I started and finished each book on the inside cover. When I picked A Passage to India up again this summer, I was stunned to find that, except for a few hazy vaguenesses, I had forgotten the book completely. I certainly had no memory of its beauty. At the heart of A Passage to India are the issues of race, friendship, decency, and the clash of cultures in British India at the turn of the 20th century. Forster's story is polyphonic, which is to say it is told from a number of voices. His prose is beautiful enough to stop you, and the novel's larger questions are ones that continue to resonate with the world's denizens even at the turn of this century.
East and West Can Never Meet 
2008-01-19
Almost a century after the book's publication the most crucial problems it discussed are as current as they were during Forster's life. The impossibility of communicating across the divide of culture, religion, and race, seems to be even more alive then when he saw it. The value of the novel lies not so much in representing it but in the fact that Forster offers a way out - personal contact. There is little chance people will suddenly like Muslims, Pakistanis, gays, lesbians, Moroccans, Turkish, Kurds etc etc - there is a chance (a very slim chance, Forster would be quick to add) that an American and a Muslim, a Turk and a Kurd, an Israeli and a Palestinian can be friends. The world may not want it, the people that surround them may not want it but the results depend on us alone. If we do not try we only have ourselves to blame.
Clash of Two Cultures Basis for Tragic Tale 2007-12-13
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.
Couldn't do it 
2007-08-08
A picture of the clash between ruler and ruled and of the prejudices and misunderstandings that foredoomed Britain's "jewel of the crown", this novel of society in India ranks high among the great literature of the 20th century.
Hard to Believe this Was Written 80+ Years Ago [24][58][T] 2007-06-28
The love-hate relationships weave throughout this book to an extent unlike any other that I have ever read.
Major characters and young lovers, Adela Quested and Ronny Heaslop, love and hate and love and finally part from one another. Their engagement sizzles out in the heat of the Indian summer. Other major characters, Dr. Aziz and Professor Fielding, are great friends, to the point where Fielding severs relations with his separatist British friends in honor of his wrongly arrested Indian friend. But, through strange facts and circumstances, Aziz begins to hate, then detest and ultimately love him again.
Perhaps the greatest love, with no hate, is Mrs. Moore. She loves Indians - not just India. Indians respond with a loving chant of her name - Esmiss Esmoor. She rises to the divine. But, alas even she must demure to the almighty British imperialistic state - this is a 1924 novel when India and Britain were in a love-hate relationship of their own.
This novel is Forster's great rebound. Thought to be a severely suffering writer-blocked novelist, he could reach no more for Italy to spur him to the typewriter ("A Room with a View" and "Where Angels Fear to Tread"). Unlike "Room" or "Angels", he does not deliver an ethical question to the reader as handled by British aristocracy. The moral or ethical question here is directed to all Brits -- rich or poor, new to India or born to India -- and asks if what they do to others is devastingly harmful, let alone inappropriate.
Divided in the three parts, the book sets you up [Part I: Mosque], slams the British [Part II: Caves] and sums it up [Part III: Temple]. To his credit, Forster's delivery of this book may have been as recklessly brave as Fielding's protection of Dr. Aziz - the British with whom each associates would not kindly take to each's allegiance to the "other" side.
Much akin to America's great "To Kill a Mockingbird", this novel deals with the classic trial of a great citizen of the oppressed who allegedly acted wrongly to one of the young white women. Unlike "Mockingbird", this book concentrates more on the victim of the allegations and allows him to receive true justice - the white woman in this trial has a great deal more character and saves his day.
I can only wonder how this book affected Britain. Like Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle", people were probably enlightened by this book's revelations. British people would have had to discuss the atrocities contained within the pages of this novel and social change would inevitably follow. Written strongly with great drama, this book unfortunately remains applicable to today's world and probably still would be discussed if delivered to themainstream reading masses.
"I haven't received it YET".... 2007-02-08
Ok, that I live in Italy, but even if a whole month's already elapsed, I haven't gotten yet this book...
Honestly, I had hoped for a quicker delivery.
A classic, and very tedious 2006-11-08
This was required reading for my British Literature class. It's the only novel in the class that I struggled with and only struggled from boredom. It is entirely possible that I just do not understand the genius that is Forster, but I did not enjoy this novel. A lover of Forster or Modernist writing might enjoy it more. It must be a classic for a reason.
The Echoing Malabar Caves Speak Loudly and Clearly 2006-08-28
At its core A PASSAGE TO INDIA is a darkly pessimistic view of the future between India and Great Britain. When E. M. Forster published it in 1924, England had but recently begun to divest itself not only of its overseas colonial empire but also the attendant mind set that was proving more difficult to eradicate. Many English still believed, even if subconsciously, that Indians, in their swarthiness and what to the English seemed like their grubby living conditions in Bombay were utterly incapable of carrying on in any meaningful way without the constant assistance of Britain. It was against this background that Forster wrote of the bitterness and harsh feelings that he saw as deeply ingrained on both sides. Ironically, for those who view his book as a raw but honest portrayal of this mutual acrimony, Forster himself is guilty of the same underlying assumptions against which he so eloquently rails.
The dramatic focus begins with Dr. Aziz, an intelligent Moslem physician who sees the English as arrogance personified but is inclined to think that with a growing understanding and compassion, the walls of prejudice may be breached and India and England may co-exist in reasonable harmony. He is aided in this belief by his association with Mrs. Moore, a liberal Englishwoman, and Cyril Fielding, an equally understanding principal of the British Government College. However, when Aziz attends a bridge party given by various English personnel, he is rudely treated and is humiliated, causing him to rethink his earlier optimism. The climax of the book occurs when Aziz invites Mrs. Moore and her friend Adela Quested to visit the mysterious Malabar Caves, where wind and echoes resound. During their trip, Adela hears the wind and becomes disoriented. She later claims that Aziz assaulted her, a crime for which he is arrested and tried in court. This trial becomes a national event, and when Adela recants her accusation, Aziz is freed, but he is terribly embittered, and India itself sees the accusation as yet another example of English condescension. The novel ends with Aziz breaking all ties with his friend Fielding.
Early in the novel, Forster clearly states his belief that it may not be possible for English and Indians to live in harmony. He suggests that in the early and friendly relations between Aziz and Fielding such a harmony may be realized, but as the book's events reveal, that this harmony is but an illusion, as wispy as the sounds echoing from Malabar Caves. The friendship between the two is not strong and is based more on shared philosophical goals than personal affinities. During the course of the bitter trial, this friendship proves incapable of supporting the strain and is finished. The other liberal, Mrs. Moore, is conveniently spirited out of the book so she need not testify on Aziz's behalf. When Forster closes with Aziz defiantly proclaiming that he is now staunchly in the camp of those who oppose social reconciliation, there is a tendency to overlook what undercuts what otherwise might be Forster's surface sadness at his view that matters between England and India are irreparably breached. Forster is so relentlessly insistent in his belief that this gap is permanent that the reader begins to wonder whether Forster's reasons lie more with subliminal agreement with the "white man's burden" rather than any objective assessment of undeniable fact. Further, when he allows Mrs. Moore to so conveniently avoid helping Aziz during the trial, Forster may simply have found the path of least resistance and thus not have to worry about questioning his own underlying assumptions. The problems, then, in identifying and confronting the issues that Forster raised in 1924 are as elusive today as were the echoes that resonated so loudly in the Marabar Caves the day Adela Quested opened that can of racial worms.
