Berggasse 8

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. 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 time spent in India, before »A Passage to India«, E. M. Forster’s great work of literature, is published. During these years, Morgan will come to a profound understanding of himself as a gay man, and of the infinite subtleties and complexity of human nature, bringing these great insights to bear in this novel – and moreover in a second one, »Maurice«, the great gay classic. At once a fictional exploration of the life and times of 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.

Damon Galgut: Arctic Summer
South Africa 2014, 368 pp., pb