Life to Come

A searing collection of E. M. Forster’s short stories about forbidden sexuality and desire‘Neither of them knew when the end came, and he when he realised it felt no sadness, no remorse’Ranging from moving to satirical, historical to supernatural, Forster’s masterful storytelling is on full display in these tales of passion and betrayal. Love, death, class and race collide in these short stories, which are alive with sharp social observations and thrum with the threat of violence that stalked gay men’s lives.Written between 1903 and 1957, only two out of the fourteen stories in this collection were published during E. M. Forster’s lifetime: most of the other stories remained unpublished because of their overtly gay themes.Introduction by Diarmuid Hester

Beautifully written . . . has a freshness, sparkle and bite, Have we been as ready for Forster's honesty as we thought we were? . . . the best realized of the homosexual stories dovetail perfectly into the best of all his work. Even the earliest and most ephemeral of them will be recognized as the frailer embodiments of the same passionate convictions that made for the moral iron of his novels

Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) wrote six novels - Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910), A Passage to India (1924). Maurice , written in 1914, was published posthumously in 1971. He also published two volumes of short stories; two collections of essays; a critical work (Aspects of the Novel); The Hill of Devi; two biographies; two books about Alexandria; and the libretto for Britten's opera Billy Budd. Pankaj Mishra was born in North India in 1969 and is the author of The Romantics: A Novel and An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World.