Most Popular Books by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR: 17 short stories “about belonging, desire, and the boundaries of love” from “one of the 20th century’s great female writers”—with a foreword by Anita Desai (Washington Post). “Jhabvala has Alice Munro’s gift for making you feel you’re reading a novel in miniature.” —Seattle Times Nobody has written so powerfully of the relationship between and within India and the Western middle classes than Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. In this selection of stories, chosen by her surviving family, her ability to tenderly and humorously view the situations faced by three (sometimes interacting) cultures—European, post–Independence Indian, and American—is never more acute. In “A Course of English Studies,” a young woman arrives at Oxford from India and struggles to adapt, not only to the sad, stoic object of her infatuation, but also to a country that seems so resistant to passion and color. In the wrenching “Expiation,” the blind, unconditional love of a cloth shop owner for his wastrel younger brother exposes the tragic beauty and foolishness of human compassion and faith. The wry and triumphant “Pagans” brings us middle–aged sisters Brigitte and Frankie in Los Angeles, who discover a youthful sexuality in the company of the languid and handsome young Indian, Shoki. This collection also includes Jhabvala’s last story, “The Judge’s Will,” which appeared in The New Yorker in 2013 after her death. The profound inner experience of both men and women is at the center of Jhabvala’s writing: she rivals Jane Austen with her impeccable powers of observation. With an introduction by her friend, the writer Anita Desai, At the End of the Century celebrates a writer’s astonishing lifetime gift for language, and leaves us with no doubt of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s unique place in modern literature.

Winner of the Booker Prize as best novel of the year in 1983, Heat and Dust was also made into a major motion picture starring Julie Christie, now regarded by many as a classic.

This observant and insightful novel reveals, in rich and poignant detail, the interior lives of three generations of people in their quest for love and beauty Louise, not content with her husband''s gentle affection, strives to reclaim her youth in titillating social and spiritual adventures. Her daughter Marietta searches for beauty in lofty ideas and in her obsession for her son Mark, who believes love is to be found in the pursuit of money and young, vacuous lovers. And Leo, their eccentric, self–styled guru, satisfies himself with power–commanding the bodies and souls of his followers. Demonstrating Jhabvala''s deft twists of irony and humor, In Search of Love and Beauty brings several lifespans, full of hopes and ideals, within our grasp.

In Travelers, Jhabvala examines the unlikely convergence of four wanderers: Asha, an imperious Indian widow, Raymond, a curious Englishman, Lee, an American looking for her spiritual core, and Gopi, an impressionable young student. With a mixture of impassioned dialogue and subtle narrative, Jhabvala examines the psychological and cultural forces that wend their paths into inextricable knots of love and conflict.

Three Continents is a tale of the clash between the easternized West and the westernized East. Twins Harriet and Michael–spoiled, quixotic, and extremely wealthy–have eschewed the vapid world of cocktail parties and adulteries that seems to be their inheritance. In constantly searching to complete themselves, they become the perfect fodder for the charismatic Rawul of Dhoka and his sinister Sixth World Movement.

A humorous look at the life of a young teacher in India focuses on Prem''s life both at school and at home.

From the Booker Prize–winning novelist and screenwriter of Howard’s End: “Cinematic” and “exquisite” stories of longing, loss, and redemption (Publishers Weekly). In this expansive story collection, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, author of Heat and Dust and the screenplays for The Remains of the Day and A Room with a View, continues her lifelong meditation on East and West. Set in India, England, and New York City, A Lovesong for India reveals what unites us across oceans, cultures, and lifetimes. In “Innocence,” an older couple, whose social standing is marred by a decades–old scandal, rent out rooms in their Delhi home for both companionship and income. The couple becomes deeply invested in the lives of their two tenants, but with the addition of a third renter—a beautiful and provocative woman from India—tensions in the household push the story to its feverish conclusion. “Talent” finds Jhabvala in New York City reflecting on the friction between family and societal expectations. Magda is a talent scout whose work is her entire life until she meets Ellie, a singer whose immense ability and unguarded personality captivate Magda. Soon Ellie is integrated into Magda’s extended family—for better or worse. This remarkable collection is the hallmark of Jhabvala’s celebrated career and a testament to her “balance, subtlety, wry humor, and beauty” (The New York Times).

Chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of 1986, this volume of stories, selected by the author from her own early work, represents the essence of her Indian experience. Bearing Jhabvala''s hallmark of balance, subtlety, wry humor, and beauty, these stories present characters that prove to be as vulnerable to the contradictions and oppressions of the human heart as to those of India itself.

For her first novel in more than nine years, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has written a most unusual book in a career of distinctive and unique accomplishments. My Nine Lives is "Chapters of a Possible Past," as the subtitle declares. It is, as the author has commented, a book filled with "invented memories." Nine vignettes are linked to portray a rich life filled with searching, from London to Delhi, from Hollywood to New York. Each chapter gathers a different cast of characters, some new and some vaguely familiar, and the linked assembly is as exciting and illuminating as an artist''s first show at a Soho gallery or a new play at the Studio Theater. After seventeen books, now in her 77th year, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala takes on as her subject herself, the life she may have or may have wished to live.

Hailed as one of the best books of 1998 by the Los Angeles Times, this group of twelve short stories was written over the past twenty years. From the steamy streets of New Delhi to New York''s tony Upper East Side, Jhabvala''s characters grapple with the universal quandaries of the human experience–jealousy, passion, temptation, and deception–truths of life and love that follow no matter where we wander.

Six colourful, comic characters inhabit A Backward Place. All but one are Westerners who have come to Delhi to experience an alternative way of life. But, far from being hippies, their ability to adapt to this exotic culture often leaves something to be desired.

Jhabvala, winner of the Booker Prize as well as an Academy Award for screenwriting, has written a haunting tale of the complex and perilous relations between two young cousins, Angel and Lara. A masterful novel which explores the dangers of love and committment. "From the Trade Paperback edition.

The tangled family affairs of a New Delhi businessman, whose cause-hungry wife urges her son to "get ready for battle" and do something with his life

The saga of an Indian family transplanted to Europe and America. It begins with the great-grandfather, a merchant who emigrated to New York and spent his life writing nostalgic poetry on India. A tale of East and West, the nuances of social conventions and the immigrant''s sense of detached belonging.

Om livet i Delhi i begyndelsen af 1950erne for to unge, hvis familier lægger planer for deres fremtid

From Simon & Schuster, Esmond in India is Ruth Prawer Jhabvala''s novel following a young Indian woman who returns to post-Independence Delhi from Oxford University. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has constructed a richly ripe Indian comedy of manners. She strips bare that certain section of affluent Indian society which is particularly vulnerable to the seductions of an imperial presence, and brilliantly and wittily crystallizes some of the confusions that bedevilled India at the dawn of Independence.

10 stories of life in New Dehli and one story set in England, by a satirist of Indian middle-class mores.

A COLLECTION OF NINE SHORT STORIES ABOUT INDIA, WRITTEN WITH HUMOUR AND COMPASSION.

India 1923. La giovane, bella e irrequieta Olivia getta lo scompiglio nella colonia britannica di Satipur. Fugge con il Nawab del luogo, abbandonando il marito, un irreprensibile e zelante funzionario dell’Impero animato dai più gretti pregiudizi nei confronti della popolazione locale. Sedotta dai costumi esotici, dai riti e dalle antiche tradizioni dell’India, così in contrasto con la facciata e il perbenismo dei residenti inglesi, Olivia, incurante dello scandalo, si innamora perdutamente del Nawab, un principe dotato di carisma e abituato a concedere molto all’esercizio del potere e poco ai sentimenti. Lo vedrà non più di due, tre volte all’anno. Da questi incontri, tuttavia, rimarrà incinta. Cinquant’anni più tardi, quando i movimenti giovanili occidentali riscoprono l’India come terra della magia e di una condotta di vita alternativa al razionalismo e all’utilitarismo occidentali, anche Anne, giovane giornalista inglese, parte per il grande paese orientale. Con sé porta le lettere di Olivia, la prima moglie di suo nonno, e la stessa passione e curiosità per quel luogo così misterioso e attraente. Per un crudele scherzo del destino, Anne ripercorre fedelmente le orme di Olivia. Si innamora dell’uomo che la ospita, ne rimane incinta e si rifugia in attesa del parto in un ashram vicino alla casa dove Olivia aveva trascorso i suoi ultimi giorni. Là, a distanza di mezzo secolo, un identico interrogativo la tormenterà: può un’anima straniera afferrare lo spirito autentico, la verità di un paese così affascinante e, insieme, così diverso e remoto? Può davvero penetrare la levità e i misteri che quella terra di «calore e polvere» custodisce gelosamente?