The novels of E. M. Forster

Sie haben noch nie E. M. Forster gelesen? Hier ein kurzer Einblick in drei seiner beliebtesten Romane.

ADVANCED A Room with a View

Set in the early 1900s, this is the story of Miss Lucy Honeychurch’s visit to Italy with her older cousin and chaperone, Miss Bartlett. They wish to see the museums, art galleries and architecture of Florence.

Miss Honeychurch and Miss Bartlett arrive at the Pension Bertolini in Florence to discover that their rooms are far apart and look on to a backyard despite a specific wish they had expressed to be given rooms with a view. Two other English visitors, George Emerson and his father, offer to swap rooms with them. Although Miss Bartlett thinks of the Emersons as being “unrefined”, Lucy and George are attracted to one another — and on a picnic, unconventional George surprises Lucy with a kiss.

More or less in a panic, Lucy and Miss Bartlett leave for Rome, where Lucy spends time with a rich but horribly snobbish young man, Cecil Vyse, whom she later agrees to marry when they are back in England. Lucy, though, has begun to question her family’s thoughtless behaviour and sense of entitlement, and the reader has to hope that George will reappear to save her. This story is both a comedy and a romance. Forster shows us how the British accepted a class system that often ruined their lives, including the lives of those who found such a system absurd. Penguin UK, €8.99.

A Passage to India

E. M. Forster first visited India in 1912. The British still ruled the subcontinent, but unlike many of his peers, Forster did not enjoy the colonial lifestyle. He wrote that “mixed up with the pleasure and fun was much pain. The sense of racial tension, of incompatibility, never left me.”

This tension is the central theme in his 1924 book A Passage to India. A young British woman, Adela Quested, is travelling in India and visits some caves in the company of friends, including an Indian physician, Dr Aziz. A frightening echo in the caves confuses Adela, who believes, wrongly, that she has been assaulted by the doctor. As a result, Aziz is arrested and put in prison. While he hopes that the truth will come out, everyone else involved in the case seems to have their own understanding of the events and their own agenda.

Will Aziz be freed? And if he is, as a supporter of Indian independence, how will it affect his attitude to his English friends? This is a story in which anger, strongly held beliefs and the heat of India rise from every page. Penguin UK, €12.50.

It was supposed to have been the big political event of April, but the announcement of Labour’s leadership result was a low-key affair … overshadowed by the terrifying coronavirus crisis that has swept across Britain. As expected, Keir Starmer, the party’s shadow Brexit secretary, was decisively endorsed by Labour members and supporters. …

There are a number of daunting tasks on Starmer’s to-do list. The first is to get the substance and tenor of opposition right in these extraordinary times. Britain is crying out for a mature and responsible opposition that can forensically hold this government, whose response to the coronavirus pandemic has been marred by a lack of preparedness and transparency, to account. …

Further, he must confront the toxic cultures that have polluted his party. Most importantly, he must take responsibility for rooting out antisemitism . ... The party