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Binding: Audio CD
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9781572704862
ISBN: 1572704861
Label: BBC Audiobooks America
Manufacturer: BBC Audiobooks America
Number Of Items: 9
Publication Date: 2005-11-09
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks America
Studio: BBC Audiobooks America

Eager to know the "real" India, a group of English tourists develops a friendship with the cultivated Dr. Aziz. The veneer of trust and mutual affection is shattered during a trip to the Marabar caves, when one of the women accuses Dr. Aziz of assault. Arguably Forster's greatest novel, A Passage to India paints a troubling portrait of colonialism at its worst and, in the breach between Aziz and his English "friends," foreshadows the end of British rule in India.

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: the fruits of colonialism
Review: Set in India during the British colonial era (and published twenty-some years before Indian independence), Forster tells the story of an Indian surgeon, Dr. Aziz, and his sometime gratifying, sometimes harrowing, and always complicated interactions with the British. He also gives the perspective of several of the British residents and guests, and through this ensemble assembles a compelling picture of how colonialism affects the colonialized, the colonializers, and the relationships between the two. Some of the ideas remind me of Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in which he explains the dehumanizing impact of an oppressor relationship on both the oppressor and the oppressed.

The prose is beautiful, and Forster contextualizes his message with lively dialogue, beautiful images of rural India, demonstrations of the difficult relations between Hindus and Muslims, and other elements of conflict within Indian society as well as between the Indians and the British. The story isn't fast-paced, but with a little patience it draws you in. And the language is delicious. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Sam Dastor, and he does a very good job with distinctive voices and accents in a book filled with essential dialogue (except in the one paragraph when an American missionary makes an appearance; his accent was unlike that of any American I've ever met).

A reviewer for The Guardian wrote when the book was first published in 1924 to "congratulate him [Forster] upon the tone and temper of his new novel. To speak of its `fairness' would convey the wrong impression, because that suggests a conscious virtue. This is the involuntary fairness of the man who sees." Forster's vision is well worth reading.

[The Guardian review is available online: C.M., "A Passage to India," Guardian Unlimited, June 20, 1924.]

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