"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 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.

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.

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.

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.

A Passage to India is an excellently written book, and a benchmark in the literary age of British Imperialism. It deserves a place on the bookshelf with Great Expectations and The Grapes of Wrath. The symbols are rich, deep, and thought provoking, and Forster provides a realistic storyline and a timeless classic.

However, a word of caution. A Passage to India is an excellent book, but not an excellent story. If you don't like deciphering symbols and "reading between the lines," and instead prefer a page-turning plot that produces sweaty fingers and a rapid heart rate, this book isn't for you. An excellent story with a similar setting and similar circumstances is Burmese Days, by George Orwell, which takes place in Burma under the imperialist regime of the British Empire.

I wanted to like this classic but I gave up after Chapter 6. I found the characters confusing and couldn't relate to the story or understand a lot of the terminology used. I didn't feel compelled to make a study of it. I loved Mistry's A Fine Balance and hoped for a similarly well-developed story and characters.

Set in the fictional northern India city of Chandrapore, E.M. Forster's 'Passage to India', widely regarded as an early 20th century classic, tells the tale of the troubled interactions between British India and the country's Indian inhabitants. Forster's message seems to be that the white British and the native Indians should not have tried to interact socially outside of the accepted forms because it always ended badly for all concerned.

Rating this book is difficult. On the one hand, the characters are exceptionally well drawn as is life in British India (especially the British side). And the theme is undoubtedly largely correct that when British tried to befriend Indians in this colonial setting it usually went badly. At the same time, I found myself disliking the major characters, and particularly found young Dr. Aziz to be annoyingly flighty and over-wrought as he quickly jumped to conclusions over and over again.

The story meanders, to put it kindly, until Part 2 when the 'event' occurs at the also-fictional Marabar Caves and Forster breathes some life into the tale. Yet, while the confusion over what really happened at the caves is the focus of much of the second part of the book and the characters think they know at least what did NOT happen, Forster never does really explore what did in fact happen. And while there is clearly much fallout over the accusations Forster again does not explore how the fallout occurs.

An interesting aspect for the modern reader is the predominance of Muslim characters on the Indian side of the tale. Hindus play only a small role. This detail marks the book as predating the Partition of India that accompanied Indian independence and the establishment of India and Pakistan on the basis of religion. The Partition created millions of refugees flowing to their new country based on their religion and fostered tremendous violence and division. Hindus reasserted authority in India after the partition in place of the Muslims.

If you have an interest in British colonialism, India, or English Literature or all three, by all means read the book. Don't expect a sparkling story to go along with the fine characterizations and be ready for a dated view.

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.

Forster's novel is a classic. It appears on all "Top 100" lists, for list maniacs, but it is not really all that great. I can certainly think of a good many novels I'd rather read or reread. In the film version the novel's exotic setting springs to life, of course, and that is 99% of the novel's appeal. Otherwise it is a rather dull social drama, which bears remarkable resemblance to the inter-sex squabbles D.H. Lawrence was so good at creating. Americans have a need to be liked that prevents them from going for the jugular in quite the same lacerating way the English can. This novel is really about the disappointment women feel for their hypocritical men: husbands, brothers, and fathers. The ladies saw through the facade of English decency and authors like Lawrence (a woman-hater) and Forster (gay) were on to it. Their men promised to treat the Indians as though they were Englishmen but, of course, they didn't. Nor did they treat their women as ladies. Everybody except white Englishmen were ordered around senselessly and the women recognized the stupidity of it all and the mindless inhumanity of it. This is Forster's subject really, and when they go at it, the men and women sound astonishingly like the characters in "Women In Love." They could be anywhere, nowhere. By putting them in India, Forster created a classic.

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.

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 reckless as Fielding's protection of Dr. Aziz - the British with whom he associates would not kindly take to his 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.

Forster's novel is a classic. It appears on all "Top 100" lists, for list maniacs, but it is not really all that great. I can certainly think of a good many novels I'd rather read or reread. In the film version the novel's exotic setting springs to life, of course, and that is 99% of the novel's appeal. Otherwise it is a rather dull social drama, which bears remarkable resemblance to the inter-sex squabbles D.H. Lawrence was so good at creating. Americans have a need to be liked that prevents them from going for the jugular in quite the same lacerating way the English can. This novel is really about the disappointment women feel for their hypocritical men: husbands, brothers, and fathers. The ladies saw through the facade of English decency and authors like Lawrence (a woman-hater) and Forster (gay) were on to it. Their men promised to treat the Indians as though they were Englishmen but, of course, they didn't. Nor did they treat their women as ladies. Everybody except white Englishmen were ordered around senselessly and the women recognized the stupidity of it all and the mindless inhumanity of it. This is Forster's subject really, and when they go at it, the men and women sound astonishingly like the characters in "Women In Love." They could be anywhere, nowhere. By putting them in India, Forster created a classic.

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.

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.

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.

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.

First of all, I'd like to commend the reviewer G.B. Talovich (in the Spotlight Reviews as I write this) for his analysis of the archetype underpinnings of the novel. It made me reconsider the novel as a whole and appreciate it all the more.

A Passage to India was written in 1924 and it bears similarities to some of Forster's literary contemporaries, most notably Orwell's Burmese Days and the short stories of Somerset Maugham. Here we have India, ancient, diverse, plagued with ancient schisms, a "muddle", under the authoricratic rule of colonial Britain. The British portrayed here conform to the rule: stuffy and prejudiced, with no love for their foreign station, maintaining a thin veneer of the Victorian role - to keep themselves "proper", warding away the dust and sweat and sweltering heat of an exoticism they can never truly understand, nor wish to incorporate. It's all about tennis and tea-time and the Club. As a contrast to these rigid expatriates, Forster introduces two arrivals, Mrs. Moore and Ms. Quested, initially starry-eyed and curious about the subcontinent, willing to taste the culture - if only taste, and nothing more - to satisfy the instinct for romance and adventure. This leads them into contact with the Muslim Dr. Aziz, who promises to show them India and ends up doing so more than any of them wish; "that incident at the Marabar Caves" results in explosively exposing the dichotomy of social conduct and temperament between disparate cultures, the superiority-wound ever-festering beneath the Western mandate to civilize and the East's own long-standing hierarchy establishment.

To wit: "It was, in a new form, the old, old trouble that eats the heart out of every civilization: snobbery, the desire for possessions, creditable appendages; and it is to escape this rather than the lusts of the flesh that saints retreat into the Himalayas. (chapter 26 pg 235, old penguin edition)"

At first I was a bit puzzled by Forster's approach, but as I read on it dawned on me that the author was displaying not just the discomfort and isolation of the British, but that of Aziz as well. As a Muslim, he is forced to inhabit three worlds: that of the dominant Hindu population, that of the snooty colonials and, deep within, that of his own faith and culture, marginalized by sheer population. Victimized as much by his own people as by the judgment-cry of the West, he eventually chooses exile, augmented in the final section `Temple'. The `Author's Voice' character, the atheist and open-minded Fielding, also capitulates to the home-town creed by the end of the novel, sacrificing his freedom for the reward of security, the buffer against the exile's loneliness, and his final meeting with Aziz - in which the earth itself seems to grumble that reconciliation between East and West cannot yet happen - is more powerful because of where these two characters have gone and what they have, in effect, given up due to outward pressures.

A Passage to India is widely regarded as a masterpiece of the 20th century, highlighting the internal conflicts that would, in time, lead to Indian independence, casting a caustic eye to the irrevocable differences endemic to East/West relationships whenever superstition and racism rear their ugly heads... an all too common occurrence. Recommended.

Being the "Orientalist" that I am, I simply loved "A Passage to India" E.M Foster does an excellent job on character development and the relationships that build up to fall; then of course, build up again. The entire book is a rollercoaster of friends and foes. The book will keep you puzzled at who really is the antagonist and protagonist of the story. The book has many symbolic meanings within itself that deal with humanity and conflict in general.

My favorite character in the book was Mr. Fielding. He related to my own character in so many ways. He seemed to be one of the few who wanted to understand the Indians (Muslim and Hindu).
The book is dealing with the conflict that the British and Indian people had when the British Raj was in power. Looking from both sides of the spectrum, it really exposes the prejudice one had for another. Not only is it a matter of separation in India by the Indian and British, but it also deals with another internal conflict in India with Muslims and Hindus. Truly, it was a divided India.

While sometimes a tedious read, "A Passage to India" plays out to be a very well-written story full of rich history, interesting characters, and very opinionated peoples. This book is highly recommended to anyone who would like to understand some very interesting customs of India. Check it out!

E.M. Forster is definitely an artist, but in A Passage to India his artistry falls short of the mark. As in all of his novels, the themes of this book are both timely and yet eternally relevant; however, the composition of the story doesn't live up to the standard he set with Howard's End. The echoes of Forster's philsophical standards are here, but there is a sense of cynicism and hopelessness that obscures the moral value of the book. Whereas in A Room with A View Forster managed to stamp the entire novel with a certain ideology through a few well phrased and placed passages, A Passage to India is more of a "muddle". And while that metaphoric fog adds to the picturesque effect of the story, it makes the thematic elements more obscure and less open to the reader.

This book is good, as far as the story goes, but Forster could and did do much better.

At the end of A Passage to India, the British hero, Cyril Fielding, and the Indian doctor, Aziz, attempt to fully reconcile and restore their friendship before they part ways for good. With that their horses swerve apart, the path divides, rocks jut up and all the obstacles, from the sky to the town below "said in their hundred voices, `No, not yet,' `No not there.'" Forster, like Kipling, wrote of an unbridgeable gap between East and West.

Cyril Fielding is an educator who as the audacity not to take the British stance that Aziz, a respected doctor, tried to violate Adela Quested in the Marabar caves. What really happened is the book's question, and to show its complexity we visit the world of the British club, and begin to understand its expatriate members and their opinions on the locals. We see the national challenge that the Hindus and Moslems face with each other, and are privy to what to many would be a very confusing Hindu worship ceremony. We also hear and see the perspective of the nationals to the Britons and to their control, and see them dream and strive for some type of workable nationalism. Written in an engaging prose and helped by solid character development, A Passage to India is the work of a gifted writer. I discovered Forster by confusing him with C.S. Forrester, the author of The African Queen, and discovered that I was familiar with his works from the films A Room with a View and Howard's End, both adapted from his books. Forester was an insightful writer of the human condition, and I was impressed with many of his comments:

"Mrs. Moore did not take the disappointment as seriously as Miss Quested, for the reason that she was 40 years older, and had learned that life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate. Adventures to occur, but not punctually."

"There is no harm in deceiving society as long as she does not find you out, because it is only when she finds you out that you have harmed her; she is not like a friend or God, who are injured by the mere existence of unfaithfulness."

"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."

"She was only recommending the universal brotherhood he sometimes dreamed of, but as soon as it was put into prose it became untrue."

"Although her hard schoolmistressy manner remained, she was no longer examining life, but being examined by it; she had become a real person."

"After 40 years' experience, he learned to manage his life and make the best of it on advanced European lines, had developed her personality, explored his limitations, controlled his passions-and had done it all without becoming either pedantic or worldly. A creditable achievement, but as the moment passed he felt he ought to have been working at something else the whole time-he didn't know at what, never would know, never could know, and that is why he felt sad."

The question of the Marabar Caves is the central point around which the book revolves. Yet as important are the cultures, history, religions and way of life between groups of people, all expressed adroitly by Forster. As he himself said, his work is "about something wider than politics...about the universe as embodied in the Indian earth and the Indian sky."

EM Forster's A Passage to India is, at first, a challenging book to digest. A study in contrasts: Indian and British, Moslem and Hindu, male and female, it offers one final contrast to the reader: near boredom and high intrigue. It is as if Forster intentionally brought his audience to the brink of apathy before springing the event of magnitude upon them. Startled from languour, Adela Quested's misfortune in the Marabar Caves becomes more pressing, more imminent, more real. Aziz, the hapless facilitator, finds himself accused of a nefarious plot and, from there, the plausibility of British colonialism is explored in microcosm.

Sluggish for fully one half of the book and paced expertly in the other, A Passage to India is an ambivalent reading experience that provides, perhaps, more of the colonial experience than we first assume. Given time, we recognize that an indolent, entrenched bureacracy jolted from routine suits the pace of this book to a tee. I prefer Kipling's Kim when it comes to novels of the British Raj, though, on the whole, I found Forster's "Passage" a very worthy read. 4 stars.

I first read this book as a gauch 16 year old high school kid. This was a "must read" book for our Lit course in high school, and I remember that we had a hard time comprehending the contents of the book. All the nuances of the book were lost on us! We were puzzled on why Dr. Aziz was treated the way he was. We did not fully comprehend on EM Forster approach to India, and the British in India. Forster liked to visit India if I recollect correctly.

A few years later, I watched the film, and many of the loose strands came together in my mind. Sometimes, a visual interpretation of a book helps, and it certainly did for me. But, my confusion never really went away because of the way in which the novel ended. It was left to the readers to decide what had happened to Miss Quested in the caves, and having Dr. Aziz along on the trip certainly did not help him.

This book might be a difficult read if the reader is not informed about India, and how the nature of the colonial rule went through some fundamental changes in the early 20th century.

EM Forster writes well, and it might be worth reading because of that. Hopefully, you will not be confused like I was when I read the book. I have not had the heart to read the book again. One of these days I just might, and then maybe I shall post a revised review of the book.

One reviewer mentioned that Forster probably never visited India. This is untrue...as he visited the country at length several times. His fascination with India started when he was a private tutor to an young Indian man that he fell in love with...his feelings were not reciprocated, however. He later went on to visit India because of those feelings. Just FYI.

This book is absolutely horrible. The plot is confusing, and the style of writing is muddled and boring. I kept reading this book waiting for it to climax. Sadly, it never really did climax. The only interesting part was the conflict between Aziz and Ms. Quested. Other than that short part, the rest of the book was terrible. Forester would go on and on about the same thing, and he would overanalyze the most minute details. For instance, in the beginning chapters of the book, Forester took at least four pages to describe the Maraber Caves. He just kept going on and on about these caves, and I wished that he would simply get to the point. The rest of the book was pretty much drawn out like this.

Reading this book was not just boring--but excruciating. I would not recommend A Passage to India to anyone.

This book is a book that is deeper than it first appears. It deals with the tension between the British and the native Indians of India, as well as with the tension between the Hindus and the Muslims. It also deals with the mystical in its portrayal of characters in search of the infinite and eternal. The book is divided into three sections which correspond with the seasons of the Indian year - the Cold Weather, the Hot Weather and the Rains. Each section of the book is dominated by each of the seasons. Each section also focuses on one of the three ethnic groups found in India during this time (1920's). They are Muslim, Anglo-Indian and Hindu. This is a very deep book, that has to be read at least a couple of times in order for the reader to pick up all the nuances.