The Hill of Devi

“This is E.M. Forster’s fascinating account of two visits he made to the state of Dewas Senior in 1912 and 1921.

Consisting largely of letters written home, interspersed with later comments, The Hill of Devi conveys all the excitement, amusement and curiosity aroused in Forster by his experiences.

The central figure in the drama is the Maharajah himself: witty, complex and sensitive … ‘certainly a genius, and possibly a saint and he had to be king’. As his secretary, Forster was privileged, among other things, to ride elephants, to receive an ‘Official Insult;’ and to attend the strange eight-day festival of Gokul Ashtami.

Forster came to regard his stay in India as the ‘great opportunity’ of his life, later using much of the material in The Hill of Devi for his most famous novel, A Passage to India.”