Travel classic The Hill of Devi, 1953

E.M. Forster&rsquos account of his Indian travels is a very fabulous account of India at a particular time. The Avenger edition, in particular, contains an account of Forster&rsquos intimate life at the Maharaja&rsquos place in Dewas, where he was a private secretary, which is not in any other edition of the book. It&rsquos quite a revelation about the the palace and about Forster&rsquos own shenanigans, so it&rsquos worth tracking down. Forster made, in total, three trips to India, but the two trips that are covered in that book sort of bookend the writing of A Passage to India. His first visit here was in 1912, the second in 1922. The first visit was for six months, the second was for a whole year. It was at the height of the British Raj, so it&rsquos loaded with all kinds of rather horrible political associations, but Forster was an outsider to the Raj and also an insider. He&rsquos kept a very detailed journal of his travels on his first trip, and it&rsquos just full of lovely little anecdotes and insights. On his second visit, although he was staying more or less in one place, he offers a rich insight into the very unreal world of a princely state, and how it worked. I spent a lot of time laughing at what he was describing because it&rsquos so weird, and so very British and very Indian at the same time, and so much of what he recounts feels very contemporary. For all those reasons, I really love the book.

Damon Galgut is a novelist and playwright whose books include the Man Booker-nominated In a Strange Room

(As told to Shreya Ila Anasuya)