
A Passage to India
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Narrated by:
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Sam Dastor
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By:
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E. M. Forster
About this listen
Exclusively from Audible
Dr. Aziz is a young Muslim physician in the British Indian town of Chandrapore. One evening he comes across an English woman, Mrs. Moore, in the courtyard of a local mosque; she and her younger travelling companion Adela are disappointed by claustrophobic British colonial culture and wish to see something of the 'real' India. But when Aziz kindly offers to take them on a tour of the Marabar caves with his close friend Cyril Fielding, the trip results in a shocking accusation that throws Chandrapore into a fever of racial tension.
Set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s it deals with the common racial tensions and prejudices between Indians and the British who ruled India.
Many of Forster's novels observed class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society including A Passage to India, the novel which brought him his greatest success. A secular humanist, Forster showed concern for social, political, and spiritual divisions in the world.
Time magazine included A Passage to India in its All-Time 100 Novels list and it was selected as one of the 100 great works of 20th century English literature by the Modern Library.
Directed by David Lean, a film adaptation was released in 1984 that won numerous awards including two Oscars.
Narrator Biography
A Cambridge graduate who trained at RADA under the direction of Sir Laurence Olivier, Sam Dastor has long featured on screen and stage. He is best known for The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004) and for twice portraying Gandhi in both Lord Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy (1986), and Jinnah (1998).
Sam Dastor has starred in many West End productions with roles such as Ariel in The Tempest, and Orlando in As You Like It. His most recent work has included starring on stage at the Wolsey Theatre in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2016). He has narrated a large catalogue of audiobooks including V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas.
Public Domain (P)2014 Audible, Inc.Critic reviews
What did you like most about A Passage to India?
A not unsympathetic colonial perspective on India that shows how attitudes were not always as prejudiced as we may imagine whilst reminding us of the worst facets of British colonial racism.What about Sam Dastor’s performance did you like?
His extraordinary ability to range between Indian and British accentsWas this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Definitely!Any additional comments?
I imagined this would have been a lot fustier than it was.Don't overlook an older book...
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Really enjoyed
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Surprising
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Sheer brilliance
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Amazing, Amazing, Amazing
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Unafraid lucid and humorous
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Reader
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Would you try another book written by E. M. Forster or narrated by Sam Dastor?
Yes, Sam was a great narratorWould you recommend A Passage to India to your friends? Why or why not?
No, as the plot was very thin; very little happened, and the nuances are lost in this post colonial century. I'm sure it was relevant in its day, but feels incredibly dated.Any additional comments?
I enjoyed Room with a View and Howard's End, but found that I rarely empathized with the characters in Passage to India, and a lot of them did seem fairly thin and one dimensional. It was difficult to finish, and a disappointment.Slow burning book showing colonial prejudices
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Meh.
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There were some passages which were outright brilliant. They punctured the air and created a stillness after I had listened to them. I could listen to them again and again, and never cease to draw something out of them. Consider this example where he talks about men yearning for poetry and India failing to accommodate them:
"Making sudden changes of gear, the heat accelerated its advance after Mrs. Moore's departure until existence had to be endured and crime punished with the thermometer at a hundred and twelve. Electric fans hummed and spat, water splashed on to screens, ice clinked, and outside these defences, between a greyish sky and a yellowish earth, clouds of dust moved hesitatingly.
In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted—Balder, Persephone —but here the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them. The annual helter-skelter of April, when irritability and lust spread like a canker, is one of her comments on the orderly hopes of humanity. Fish manage better; fish, as the tanks dry, wriggle into the mud and wait for the rains to uncake them.
But men try to be harmonious all the year round, and the results are occasionally disastrous. The triumphant machine of civilization may suddenly hitch and be immobilized into a car of stone, and at such moments the destiny of the English seems to resemble their predecessors', who also entered the country with intent to refashion it, but were in the end worked into its pattern and covered with its dust."
"India is not a promise, only an appeal"
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