The “inner darkness of the commercial age”, with its self-confident hypocrisy and inability to “connect”, confronts Bloomsbury-esque ideals and characters in this intimate masterpiece from 1910. Subtle, sharp, funny and moving: the style and thinking are wonderful, Forster’s humanity inimitable. This novel, so carefully structured that we never quite see what’s coming, retains its power to shock over a century after publication. Also available in hardback.
