South African novelist Damon Galgut (The Good Doctor) has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and his new biographical novel about Edward Morgan Forster is a quantum leap beyond his usual superb writing. Painstakingly researched and impeccably drawn, it's the moving account of a shy 37-year-old British virgin called Morgan, author of four popular novels but still emotionally shackled to his mother, as he's transformed--with a bit of help from a young Indian student, an Egyptian cab driver and a hilarious little Maharajah--into the literary giant who will write A Passage to India.
For lovers of English literature, Galgut's novel is a feast of references to Forster's masterpiece. Morgan forges a deep bond with a young Indian student, which sets the stage for the cross-cultural friendship between Fielding and Aziz at the heart of A Passage to India. Morgan visits the Barabar Caves, which he will transform into his novel's terrifying and mysterious center. Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence are among the dozens of historical characters who appear in the book, nudging the insecure Morgan to produce his greatest work.
Throughout his life, Morgan is portrayed as a man always in the middle, torn between English ways and Indian, between patriots and conscientious objectors, between public respectability and closeted homosexuality. If E.M. Forster could have written an honest novel about his own frustrated life, he might have written Arctic Summer. Galgut has done the next best thing: he's created a wise, sensitive, sometimes hilarious novel in the Forster tradition of subtle observations and cultural clash. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.