A Passage to India

By: E. M. Forster

Narrated by: Sam Dastor

Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

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

"[Narrator Sam] Dastor's performance is outstanding. A huge cast of characters of all classes and nationalities comes vibrantly alive as he takes the voice of each.... His eloquent reading transforms into powerful performance literature." ( AudioFile)

Compelling Story and Reading

What made the experience of listening to A Passage to India the most enjoyable?

Quintessential modernist text--Forester deals artfully with British colonialism in India, managing to paint both the Indians and the English sympathetically. Most of the characters are full and dynamic. Anchoring the story in the friendship of Mrs. Moore (an elderly woman) and Dr. Aziz (a widower) begins the story's exploration of the power of relationships and the difficulty of forming and sustaining "intimate" relationships. A Passage to India is a moving story the lure of power and about the difficulty of knowing another.

What other book might you compare A Passage to India to and why?

Howard's End--just another excellent Forster text, dealing with some of the same issues of disconnectedness.

Which scene was your favorite?

When Aziz first met Mrs. Moore.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

A quest for identity set in the heat and beauty of India...

Great story! Great narration!

I love E.M. Forster's writing style--clear, distinct, and powerful. He has an amazing way of writing about an extremely complex situation in an understandable way.

I found the narrator's character voices to be clear and easy to understand. This is a good recording.

An all time classic

I've returned to this book many times over the years, but to listen to Adam Dastor reading it has added another dimension of pleasure.

Beautiful story of India

Enjoyed this book immensely! We listened to it together as a family as part of our son's Classical Conversations Challenge 2 curriculum...

Semi-Jarring

I understand that the book has certain words and that certain characters are Indian, but hearing an obviously white voice actor saying the n-word in an Indian accent lessened my enjoyment of the book significantly.

Classic

The book is a classic and I enjoyed the narration overall, but Dastor's women can have a very annoying tone to them. Small quibble but nonetheless.

As for the writing, I found Forster's imagery particularly compelling; he writes long discursive passages that are really quite beautiful. The story does have a strange sort of racial tone to the modern ear but I'm sure it was progressive for its age.

A great story about friendship

The reputation of this book misled me into thinking it centered around Miss Quested's court case. Seen from that viewpoint and the detestable Miss Quested, the book is annoying in that peculiarly Forster-ish way. But seen as the friendship between Aziz and Fielding, the book becomes something else: one of those rare books that trace the building of a friendship between two people. I have a few issues with Mr. Forster. His depictions of romantic relationships don't even attempt to be convincing. His depictions of social prejudice and injustice are laid on as thickly as the coarsest caricatures. His attempts to treat characters fairly who have a different viewpoint from his own come across as...well, as attempts to express a viewpoint he really fails to grasp. And his female protagonists, especially Miss Quested, lack all pretense at being sympathetic. That said, Forster has enough good points to keep me interested. He periodically will punctuate his narrative with a profound aside expressing something unutterably beautiful about the world and the human condition. His patience in allowing the Aziz/Fielding friendship to simmer in the background while all the foreground actions dominated the majority of the book is simply masterful.

I also have to give Forster credit for some very prescient remarks about the future of India and England. And while I may cavil about the prejudices of some of his characters, Forster is dead on at how people tend to form ranks and polarize themselves into opposing camps at the cost of truth, justice, peaceful coexistence, etc.

Sam Dastor does a terrific job distinguishing all the different characters with their differing social and class backgrounds. And while I'm sure he did not intend it, he made it exceedingly easy to hate Miss Quested.

Rich with detail, makes for a long story.

The story is rich with detail about the British occupied India. Which is not the same as "real India" as the characters say. This is not a quick read. I enjoyed the narrator. Perhaps females voice were a little overdone, but more important to me were the Indian and British accents.

Narration added much to this story

Sam Dastor's skill in narration & accents really made this story interesting. The story itself got better as it progressed. Very well done, so much so that I was anxious to know what was going to happen to the characters brought alive by Sam Dastor, so stayed with it until the end.

Enjoyable and Interesting

Certainly a well written book! And the audio book works only to complement the work. I enjoyed listening, and additionally, listening to the golden voiced Englishman voice elderly English women, in addition to older Indian men always brought a grin to my face. Describing the audiobook in one word, the word engaging comes to mind. This has piqued my interest in audiobooks, and I can not emphasize how well this example did to forge that interest.