The Life to Come: And Other Stories (Penguin Classics) - Perfect for Book Clubs, Literature Lovers & Classic Fiction Collections
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SKU:36863181
Product Description
A searing collection of E. M. Forster’s short stories about forbidden sexuality and desire‘Madness, isn’t it? What can it matter to anyone else if you and I don’t mind?’Exploratory, experimental and pioneering, the short stories collected in this volume show E. M. Forster writing about love between men with sensitivity, honesty, anger and humour. Written between 1903 and 1958, only two of the fourteen stories here appeared in print in Forster’s lifetime; most remained unpublished while homosexuality was a crime. They range from light-hearted, satirical pieces to moving, highly charged depictions of desire and shared intimacy – a Christian missionary tormented by longing in ‘The Life to Come’; a fateful woodland encounter in ‘Arthur Snatchfold’; an illicit affair between a young English officer and his Indian friend in ‘The Other Boat’ – and explore the gap between private and public selves, and the places where love, class, race and sexuality collide.Edited by Oliver StallybrassWith an Introduction by Diarmuid Hester
Customer Reviews
I recently read and enjoyed Forster’s collected short stories, comprising those published in his lifetime, where I learned of this other volume of thirteen stories found amongst his unpublished work after his death. The introduction divides them into two categories: those Forster failed to get published or did not consider good enough; and those which, like his novel Maurice, he kept to himself because of their homosexual content. (He wrote at a time when to be actively gay would land one in prison.)There are some wonderful gems in this collection, most particularly for me, Ansell, The Life to Come, What does it Matter? and, best of all, Arthur Snatchfold. Several of the slighter stories are wonderfully playful and witty. Taken as a whole, I preferred this collection to the first.
