FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE PROMISE
Shortlisted for the 2015 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction Shortlisted for the 2015 Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize Shortlisted for the 2015 University of Johannesburg English Literary Award Nominated for the 2014 Folio Prize 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 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 man, and of the infinite subtleties and complexity of human nature, bringing these great insights to bear in his remarkable novel. 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, Arctic Summer is a literary masterpiece, by one of the finest writers of his generation.
"Could well be one of the finest literary works published this year... Damon Galgut, among the finest living writers, has not only given life to a quiet enigma who suffered in love but looked at the inspiration and need that helped that enigma write six major novels."
Irish Times
"Beautifully written and utterly compelling... A vivid, moving account of the man that makes you want to read all his books again."
The Times
"Galgut is extremely good on Forster's anxieties, his loneliness, his unworldliness... The portrait is beautifully nuanced, a mixture of bold, colourful strokes and delicate little flicks of the brush."
