A passage to India

A Passage To India is set in the 1920s when India was governed by the British Raj. This novel questions if a Britisher and an Indian could be friends in pre-independence India.

In A Passage To India, two Englishwomen, young Miss Adela Quested and elderly Mrs. Moore decide to tour India. One evening, Dr. Aziz, a young Indian Muslim doctor, meets Mrs. Moore, and the two of them become friends. A few days later, the doctor, Mrs. Moore and Adela get invited to a tea-party.

Aziz volunteers to take the ladies on a trip to the Marabar Caves. Once there, Mrs. Moore feels claustrophobic, so she decides to stay behind, whereas Adela and Aziz continue with their expedition. Suddenly Adela disappears, and Aziz finds her broken glasses. Worried, he starts searching for her, only to find Adela outside talking to another Englishwoman. Before he can approach them, the two of them take off. The doctor, along with Mrs. Moore, returns to the railway station.

Unexpectedly, he gets arrested for sexually assaulting Adela in the caves. As the case unfolds, the racial tensions between the white minority and the Indian majority heighten. The Britishers are convinced that Dr. Aziz is guilty, because they believe that all Indian men lust for white women. What will happen to Dr. Aziz?

A Passage To India, originally published in 1924, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. It was also chosen as one of the hundred great works of English literature by the Modern Library. TIME selected it in its list of the 100 Best English-language novels published from 1923 to 2005.