A Passage To India: nation and narration

The Story

The reasons for the British presence in India, the extent of their power over the Indians, the many and complex reactions of the Indians to that power, the role and reliability of Forster's narrator as arbiter and truthteller, the extent to which that narrator gives voice to Forster's personal experience of India - all are brought to light in Herz's analysis. This assessment of the book's more tangible elements is complemented by Herz's recognition of its intangible elements, its ghosts, those presences that exist within its imaginative world but not necessarily on the page. The novel's "ghost story," Herz writes, "occurs in the spaces of the primary text; in dreams, memories, old photographs, and flashes of intuition that do not quite resolve." While some critics have dealt with the supernatural in Forster's work, Herz is the first to use the idea of the ghost story to come to grips with the essential elusiveness and secrecy of A Passage to India.

A paperback edition from 1993 of A Passage To India by Judith Scherer Herz. It runs to 151 pages, in very good condition. We hold one copy, so once it is gone it is gone. Shelved under Reference & Education. Wrapped with care for collectors and shipped from Kuwait.