A Passage to India by E.M. Forster is included on The Modern Library 100 Best Novels list, The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read one, and also it has the 66th spot on The Greatest Books of All Time site, hundreds of works from these compilations are reviewed on my blog, and here is the plug for the best gig there, if you wish to check it https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster is included on The Modern Library 100 Best Novels list, The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read one, and also it has the 66^th spot on The Greatest Books of All Time site, hundreds of works from these compilations are reviewed on my blog, and here is the plug for the best gig there, if you wish to check it https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

 

9 out of 10

 

Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis, my favorite author, had this to say about EM Forster: ‘isn't the old bastard tedious and diffuse? Could you ever read 'A India'? Because I never could’ https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/04/that-uncertain-feeling-by-kingsley-amis.html he was writing to Philip Larkin

 

On the other hand, E.M. Forster has another two novels that are praised, A Room With a View and Howards End, and A Passage to India is itself considered one of the best works, as the aforementioned lists testified, and even if one may be reluctant to admire it, there is a lot to appreciate in the plot, background

Mrs. Moore and Adela Quested visit India, the former is the mother of Ronny Heaslop, and the latter is supposed to marry him, both are interested to learn more about India, which is at the time a colony of The British Empire, and one of the most important themes is this clash between the rulers and the natives

 

In that, this book is so relevant for what is happening now, just as imperialism is coming back with a vengeance, Russia has invaded Ukraine and claims it is ‘theirs’, China wants Taiwan and keeps pressing it and proclaims it will have it one way or another, but what is worse is that the ‘greatest democracy in the world’ has changed

Under this Orange Woland https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-master-and-margarita-by-mikhail.html America is becoming just another rogue state, willing to take over Canada, Greenland, The Panama Canal, Gaza and who knows what else, and then he is about to destroy so much with his ‘economic nuclear war’

 

Mrs. Moore is visiting a mosque, and doctor Aziz thinks she still has her shoes on, warns her and then they start talking and eventually, they become friends, he invites her and Adela Quested to visit the Marabar Caves, because welcoming them to his house is not feasible, he takes this convoluted way out and it does not work

Doctor Aziz takes a huge task, this is so expensive, but hospitality, and the ‘oriental traditions’ appear to constrain him, though why he had to hire an elephant (‘that appears to eat gold’, meaning it is overwhelming the purse) I really do not know, but this goes to show the big difference in perspective between East and West

 

However, tragedy strikes when Adela Quested claims she has been assaulted while in the caves by Doctor Aziz, who has some glasses that appear to prove her assertions, he is arrested and then put on trial, there is unrest, the colonizers are horrified by this event, with the exception of Richard Fielding, rejected as a traitor as a consequence

The plot respects Aristotle’s rule https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/aristotle-in-ninety-minutes-by-paul.html there is a reversal when the victim testifies that the doctor has not followed her in the cave, it might have been hallucination, whatever the cause, she had been wrong, and on the stand, she is brave enough to admit her mistake

 

It is much more complicated than this, it is just one aspect that stayed with this reader, who had read the book more than ten years ago, and tried it again, as there is this new site with the GOAT books, and then I had no review after the first encounter, I do not see things exactly as Kingsley Amis, but A Passage To India is not one of my favorite books

It might be a case of going beyond the climax, in court, when the accused is proved innocent (well, a spoiler alert might have been required, but I always say I do not think anybody reads this far, and then this happens near the middle of the work) and then we go on for too long, maybe

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’