I found this book especially interesting as a contemporary expatriate. Forster asks whether colonists and the colonized can be friends on equal terms. The book (written in 1924, mind) answers:

"and then," [Aziz] concluded, half kissing him, "you and I shall be friends."

"Why can't we be friends now?" said [Fielding], holding him affectionately. "It's what I want. It's what you want."

But the horses didn't want it -- they swerved apart; the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices, "No, not yet," and the sky said, "No, not there."