Arctic Summer  (English, Hardcover, Galgut Damon)

Official Flipkart Review

“Arctic Summer” is probably one of those books which are rarely written these days and the ones that should be written more of. It is about the life of a writer and writing. The book is about the lost years (in a way) of E.M. Forster and what led him to write, “A Passage to India”. It is about love – a love which cannot be named, a love that drove Forster to India time and again; a love he felt for another man, Syed Masood Ross and how that changed his life.

The writing is brilliant. Every page shines with the beauty of language, the crispness and brevity of prose and research well done about the author. Forster comes alive in these pages like perhaps in no other book you must have read about him. The fictionalized account also helps. Galgut’s writing is brave and experimental and that is what makes the book such a stunner of a read.

Two times Booker shortlisted writer Damon Galgut intensely educes E. M. Foster’s life and his travel to India, where he found inspiration and an eerie liberation.

Summary of the Book

E. M. Foster, fondly known as Morgan, becomes friends with Syed Ross Masood, an Indian who was in England to study law. Foster had already started making name as a writer at the time. What begins as an intimate friendship, later turns out to be an intense and irrevocable love to Foster. Masood returns to India and Foster follows him in the year 1912. By then, the First World War was on the verge of breaking out. Foster is encountered with unexpected roller coaster of events. He moves back to England and visits India again in 1924, as the Private Secretary of Dewas Maharajas. His journey is of utmost passion and tumult, including many other elements of life like homosexual love, war, politics and other sensitive and contradictory issues.

About Damon Galgut

Damon Galgut is a South African writer, playwright and novelist. He studied Drama at the University of Cape Town. He battled with cancer which formed the soul of a book called Small Circle of Beings in fictional form. His novels The Good Doctor and In a Strange Room were shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2003 and 2010 Man Booker Prize respectively. The Good Doctor won him the Commonwealth Writers Prize. The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs won Damon the CNA Prize. A Sinless Season, The Quarry and The Imposter are some of the other books penned by Damon Galgut.