Arctic Summer - Tapa dura

Preoccupied by varieties of sadness - but is so crisply written, with a deceptive simplicity and directness, that it feels full of affirmations -- Summer picks * Guardian * How apt that Arctic Summer, a chronicle or a writer's longest journey to complete his masterpiece, also happens to be Galgut's finest book to date. * The Herald (Scotland) * Galgut's gifts - of phrasing, of structure, of perception - are on faultless form in these pages... Arctic Summer is a masterpiece. * Sunday Business Post * A beautifully imagined piece, getting deep inside the mind of a major English novelist. * Mail on Sunday * A masterly piece of fiction. Delicate and detailed. * Daily Mail * Galgut has so seamlessly incorporated Forster's diaries, letters and novels into his narrative that it is often hard to tell which novelist is which. * Daily Telegraph * It is a project to which Galgut, whose fiction has often covered the terrain of love, race and politics, seems perfectly suited as a writer... A remarkable, lyrical tribute. * Guardian * With insight and seemingly effortless fluidity, Mr Galgut has written a beautiful, and at times funny, novel that movingly captures the duality of one of Britain's most thoughtful authors. * Economist * 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. * Sunday 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 * 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 *

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.