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In this hard-hitting novel, first published in 1924, the murky personal relationship between an Englishwoman and an Indian doctor mirrors the troubled politics of colonialism. Adela Quested and her fellow British travelers, eager to experience the "real" India, develop a friendship with the urbane Dr. Aziz. While on a group outing, Adela and Dr. Aziz visit the Marabar caves together. As they emerge, Adela accuses the doctor of assaulting her. While Adela never actually claims she was raped, the decisions she makes ostracize her from both her countrymen and the natives, setting off a complex chain of events that forever changes the lives of all involved. This intense and moving story asks the listener serious questions about preconceptions regarding race, sex, religion, and truth. A political and philosophical masterpiece.… (more)
FemmeNoiresque: Scott's The Raj Quartet, and particularly the relationship between Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar in the first novel, The Jewel In The Crown, is a revisioning of the charge of rape made by Adela Quested to Dr Aziz. Race, class and empire are explored in the aftermath of this event, in WWII India.… (more)
The book gives an excellent impression of life in India during British colonial occupation. It gives a vivid picture of the people, the mixture of races, especially the English versus the local natives. Real character studies come alive as their thoughts are expressed. You feel you are there in the oppressive heat, meeting the players, hearing their conversations, feeling their concerns, observing the pettiness, pompousness, contrasted with the genuineness of a few of them.
Colonial India captured in a backwater town with a small but vivid collection of characters. Slow going overall. This worked well as a read just before bed as it generally put me to sleep. ( )
My least favorite Forster book. Read it because it was the subject of a podcast I enjoy, but I had a hard time following the narrative, especially towards the end. ( )
To Syed Ross Masood and to the seventeen years of our friendship
First words
Except for the Marabar caves--and they are twenty miles off--the city of Chrandrapore presents nothing extraordinary.
Towards the end of 1906 Theodore Morison, who until recently had been Principal of the Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh and now lived ay Weybridge, Surrey, was looking for a tutor in Latin for his Indian ward Syed Ross Masood, a young Moslem of good, indeed distinguished, family who was destined for Oxford. (Editor's Introduction)
The India described in A Passage to India no longer exists either politically or socially. (Prefatory Note)
Perhaps it is chance, more than any peculiar devotion, that determines a man in his choice of medium, when he finds himself possessed by an obscure impulse towards creation. (Introduction)
Quotations
"We must exclude someone from our gathering, or we shall be left with nothing."
Last words
But the horses didn't want it--they swerved apart; the earth didn't want it, sending up rock through which riders must pass single file; the temples, the tanks, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices "No, not yet," and the sky said, "No, not there."
With its masterly fusion of realism and symbolism, of the personal and cosmic, its incredibly intricate structure, its wit and wisdom, the subtlety of its psychological and political insights, its superb atmospheric and descriptive power, and the sheer virtuosity with which Forster handles the English language - yet with none of the purple or whimsical patches that occasionally disfigure the earlier novels - it represents his masterpiece and a fitting climax to his novelist's career. (Editor's Introduction)
I my also mention here that The Hill of Devi (an autobiographical work published in 1953) contains some of the material utilized n the final section of the novel. (Prefatory Note)
It is possible that the mind which saw so visionarily the significance of Stephen, and which could tell the Wilcoxes that 'nothing has been done wrong', has achieved their own wisdom; that the organism, being perfectly adjusted, is silent. (Introduction)
In this hard-hitting novel, first published in 1924, the murky personal relationship between an Englishwoman and an Indian doctor mirrors the troubled politics of colonialism. Adela Quested and her fellow British travelers, eager to experience the "real" India, develop a friendship with the urbane Dr. Aziz. While on a group outing, Adela and Dr. Aziz visit the Marabar caves together. As they emerge, Adela accuses the doctor of assaulting her. While Adela never actually claims she was raped, the decisions she makes ostracize her from both her countrymen and the natives, setting off a complex chain of events that forever changes the lives of all involved. This intense and moving story asks the listener serious questions about preconceptions regarding race, sex, religion, and truth. A political and philosophical masterpiece.
▾Library descriptions
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▾LibraryThing members' description
Book description
A mysterious incident at the Marabar caves, involving Adela Quested, newly arrived from England, and the presumed guilt of charming and mercurial Dr. Aziz, are at the centre of Forster's magnificent novel of India during the Raj. Topical now, as in 1924, in its evocation of the dangers and ambivalences inherent in colonialism, as Forster said, it is 'about something wider than politics, about the search of the human race for a more lasting home, about the universe as embodied in the Indian earth and the Indian sky, about the horror lurking in the Marabar caves...'
Jacques Marchais original library book
Haiku summary
Grottes de Marabar/Mrs Moore à la mosquée/et l'Inde des Anglais/(tiercelin)
British and native / In the dark of Marabar / Neighbours, yet distant
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It gives a vivid picture of the people, the mixture of races, especially the English versus the local natives. Real character studies come alive as their thoughts are expressed.
You feel you are there in the oppressive heat, meeting the players, hearing their conversations, feeling their concerns, observing the pettiness, pompousness, contrasted with the genuineness of a few of them.