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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 accents

Was 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.

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8 people found this helpful

Really enjoyed

A really interesting take on India in the hight of the British rule. Touches on race, religion, culture and society. Written in a great perspective documenting the highs and lows of friendship between the English and and Indians. Really good listen, would recommend.

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Surprising

I had a prejudgement in my head because of the merchant Ivory brand of film, and I’m so glad I gave this a go as it is not at all what I would have expected. Yes it is dated, but of it’s time, I felt it was quite progressive in that it didn’t reduce everyone to stereotypes and instead gave subtleties to caricatures and made them more human.

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1 person found this helpful

Sheer brilliance

Sam Dastor is absolutely brilliant, I actually thought there were a team of Indian actors!

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1 person found this helpful

Amazing, Amazing, Amazing

Brilliantly written and the atmosphere was superbly set by the reader Sam Dastor who’s ability to act out every part is astonishing!

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Unafraid lucid and humorous

I wish I had discovered this writer many years ago, this story is so fresh and captivating and relevant. Who'dve guessed.....you maybe, I wasn't expecting such a lucid perspective on the British in India thing.

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5 people found this helpful

Reader

Why did the reader use such silly voices for Mrs Moore and Adela Quested? These are main characters in the story and seem to be caricatured in a way which spoils the narration of a very fine book.

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4 people found this helpful

Slow burning book showing colonial prejudices

Would you try another book written by E. M. Forster or narrated by Sam Dastor?

Yes, Sam was a great narrator

Would 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.

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4 people found this helpful

Meh.

Thought the narration was average. The story was okay and I enjoyed parts of it, but I wasn't as gripped by it as I hoped I would be.

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1 person found this helpful

"India is not a promise, only an appeal"

The writing is first-rate and the book is probably worthy of its place in the classics, as it was outstanding throughout. There is great artistry in the narration by Sam Dastor as he mimics various accents effortlessly and keeps the flow of the story going. The book examines the prejudices we all hold in some very realistic settings, against the backdrop of colonial India in the 1920’s. A closer peek into the bare bones of human interactions is no doubt fascinating at most times, but with the author’s richly nuanced style of writing there is an added aspect. It makes you ponder without being preachy, and that to me is a hallmark of great novels.

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."

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