Where to start with E.M. Forster

British novelist, 1879–1970.

Best E.M. Forster book to start with: A Passage to India (1924), on 6 of the 16 lists it could have made.

Start with A Room with a View. It is light, funny and romantic, it moves between Florence and the English countryside, and it’s the quickest way into Forster. He wrote all three in the first quarter of the 20th century, and they share the same gentle, watchful tone. After that, Howards End is a larger story about class, houses and who inherits what, and it’s the one that makes people love him.

A Passage to India is the lists’ favourite and the most serious of the three. It’s set in British India, and its centre is a trip to some caves that goes wrong. It is slower than the other two, and it’s better for having read them first, because you will know what Forster is doing with manners and silence.

If you’d like to see a modern writer take up his ideas, read Zadie Smith’s On Beauty after Howards End. It is a different book, but you’ll recognise the starting point.