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362 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1924
She watched the moon, whose radiance stained with primrose the purple of the surrounding sky. In England the moon had seemed dead and alien; here she was caught in the shawl of night together with earth and all the other stars. A sudden sense of unity, of kinship with the heavenly bodies, passed into the old woman and out, like water through a tank, leaving a strange freshness behind.
Every day he worked hard in the court trying to decide which of two untrue accounts was the less untrue, trying to dispense justice fearlessly, to protect the weak against the less weak, the incoherent against the plausible, surrounded by lies and flattery.
“What can you expect from the fellow?” said dour Major Callendar. “No grits, no guts.” But in his heart he knew that if Aziz and not he had operated last year on Mrs. Graysford’s appendix, the old lady would probably have lived. And this did not dispose him any better towards his subordinate.
What had spoken to her in that scoured-out cavity of the granite? What dwelt in the first of the caves? Something very old and very small. Before time, it was before space also. Something snub-nosed, incapable of generosity – the undying worm itself. Since hearing its voice, she had not entertained one large thought, she was actually envious of Adela. All this fuss over a frightened girl! Nothing had happened, “and if it had,” she found herself thinking with the cynicism of a withered priestess, “if it had, there are worse evils than love.”
The song of the future must transcend creed.
Perhaps life is a mystery, not a muddle; they could not tell. Perhaps the hundred Indias which fuss and squabble so tiresomely are one, and the universe they mirror is one.
‘Your sentiments are those of a god,’ she said quietly, but it was his manner rather than his sentiments that annoyed her.
Trying to recover his temper, he said, ‘India likes gods.’
‘And Englishmen like posing as gods.’
At this point in the novel.....a little over 160 pages, I just could not take the re-reading due to boredom any longer.....began skimming pages.....and discovered.....
. If I missed anything important, please feel free to tell me, but I truly don't much care!Anyway......this classic and noted influential story is filled with racial tension between the Indians and British throughout the telling which I believe to be the whole point of the book, but OMYGOSH.....what a soporific read! Whew!
causing a political uproar.