The Life to Come : And Other Stories

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between 1903 and 1958, only two of the fourteen stories here appeared in print in Forster’s lifetime; most remained unpublished while homosexuality was a crime.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 Stallybrass. With an Introduction by Diarmuid Hester