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Extract from Letter from E.M.Forster about Yet Life Goes on by Ahmed Ali

It's beautifully written and very moving. I appreciated it not so much as a novel as for it's poetry and for the picture it gave of a vanishing civilisation. The detail was almost all of it new to me, and fascinating. It is a sort of poetical chronicle. At the end one has a poignant feeling that poetry and daily life have got parted, and will never come again together however often Delhi re-arises. I should see it as the first of a trilogy and wonder what you have in view-

Asghar's father seemed to me the main character, Asghar himself was not interesting to me so much.

There's a great deal of wisdom in the book. On page (115 I think) last two passages that moved me deeply: one of them about the death of a bawd, the other about one's own face, for which, on occasion, the whole world becomes a mirror.

(Sd.) E.M. FORSTER | 18.8.[19]39.