A Passage to India (Penguin Classics)

A Passage To India (Penguin Classics) is a book about prejudice between British people and Indians in 1920s. The story is set in pre-Independence India, when it was ruled by the British, and it questions whether a friendship between a British person and an Indian would have been possible in those prejudiced times.

The book begins with two Englishwomen, the old Mrs Moore and Miss Adela Quested deciding to tour India. Mrs Moor befriends a charismatic Indian doctor named Aziz. A few days later, Aziz offers to take the ladies on a trip to the Marabar Caves. Mrs Moore feels claustrophobic once they are there so she decides to stay behind, and Aziz and Adela continue exploring the caves. In the darkness of the caves, Adela goes missing and Aziz finds her broken spectacles. He searches for her worriedly, only to find her talking to another Englishwoman outside. The two of them leave before he can go up to them, so he returns to the railway station with Mrs Moore.

However, Aziz is soon taken into custody for sexually assaulting Adela in the caves. The case causes the racial tension and prejudices between the Indian and the white community to bubble up and boil over. The British people are convinces of Aziz’s guilt because their prejudice directs them to believe that all Indian men cannot contain their lust for British women.

A Passage To India (Penguin Classics) was published by Penguin UK in 2005 in paperback.

Key Features:

• The book won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
• TIME selected it in its list of the 100 Best English-language novels published from 1923 to 2005.