PublishedAtlantic Books, March 2014 |
ISBN9780857897190 |
FormatSoftcover, 368 pages |
Dimensions23cm × 14.6cm × 1.6cm |
In 1912, the SS Birmingham approaches India. On board is Morgan Forster, novelist and man of letters, who is embarking on a journey of discovery. As Morgan stands on deck, the promise of a strange new future begins to take shape before his eyes. The seeds of a story start to gather at the corner of his mind: a sense of impending menace, lust in close confines, under a hot, empty sky.
It will be another twelve years, and a second time spent in India, before A Passage to India, EM Forster's great work of literature, is published. During these years, Morgan will come to a profound understanding of himself as a man, and of the infinite subtleties and complexity of human nature, bringing these great insights to bear in his remarkable novel.
At once an exploration of the life and times of one of Britain's finest novelists, his struggle to find a way of living and being, and a stunningly vivid evocation of the mysterious alchemy of the creative process, Arctic Summer is a literary masterpiece, by one of the finest writers of his generation.
Bill is one of the founders of Boffins and has been involved in selecting the books we stock since our beginning in 1989. His favourite reading is history, with psychology, current affairs, and business books coming close behind. His hobbies are reading, food, reading, drinking, reading, and sleeping.
This beautifully written novel captures its place and time atmospherically and believably. A fictionalised account of E.M. Forster’s life in the years between the publication of Howard’s End and A Passage to India, it is very true to the known details of his life in this time. Galgut’s achievement is on many levels. Forster’s coming to terms with his sexuality, his crossing of barriers of class and race, and his experience of colonialism in a very different age to ours are themes explored sympathetically. I’m a great admirer of Forster’s fiction, and I loved this slow, precise and reflective novel.
