Based on author E. M. Forster's real-life experiences, A Passage to India is a mind-opening tale set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement of the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of 20th-century English literature by the Modern Library and won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Time magazine included the novel in its "All-Time 100 Novels" list.