Arctic Summer
Damon Galgut

"Beautifully written and utterly compelling. . . . A vivid, moving account of [E.M. Forster] that makes you want to read all his books again."--The Times

This masterpiece novel about E.M. Forster, his life, struggles with homosexuality, and the writing of his universally loved novel A Passage to India will call to mind the international success of Colm Toibin's The Master. For readers of Toibin, Ian McEwan, and J.M. Coetzee.

In 1912, the SS Birmingham approaches India. On board is Morgan Forster, novelist and man of letters, who is embarking on a journey of discovery. As Morgan stands on deck, the promise of a strange new future begins to take shape before his eyes. The seeds of a story start to gather at the corner of his mind: a sense of impending menace, lust in close confines, under a hot, empty sky. It will be another twelve years, and a second, and much longer time spent in India, before A Passage to India, E.M. Forster's most beloved work of literature, is completed. During these years, Morgan will come to a recognition of his homosexuality and of the infinite subtleties and complexities of human nature. Arctic Summer is a literary masterpiece, an intimate portrait of the man who became one of Britain's finest novelists, his struggle to find a way of living and being, and a stunningly vivid evocation of the mysterious alchemy of the creative process.