Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

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Biography

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was born in Cologne, Germany in 1927. As her family was Jewish they left Germany when Hitler came to power and went to England. She became a British citizen in 1948. She studied English literature at Queen Mary College, London and married Cyrus Jhabvala, an Indian architect. They moved to India. While there, she started to write novels about India. Her early novels show her love of India but in her later ones she took a more critical view. Subsequently, she wrote about the effect India has on Westerners living there. In 1975 she moved to the United States, where she now lives, and her novels are more set in Europe and the United States. She became a US citizen. However, her main literary reputation is based on her Indian novels, particularly Heat and Dust. She also has a strong reputation as a screenwriter for Ismail Merchant and James Ivory. She died in 2013.

Books about Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Ralph Crane: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Bibliography

1955 To Whom She Will (US: Amrita)
1956 The Nature of Passion
1958 Esmond in India
1960 The Householder
1962 Get Ready for Battle
1963 Like Birds, Like Fishes
1965 A Backward Place
1968 A Stronger Climate: Nine Stories
1971 An Experience of India
1972 A New Dominion (US: Travelers)
1975 Heat and Dust
1976 How I Became a Holy Mother and Other Stories
1983 In Search of Love and Beauty
1986 Out of India : Selected Stories
1987 Three Continents
1993 Poet and Dancer
1996 Shards of Memory
1998 East into Upper East
2004 My Nine Lives: Chapters of a Possible Past
2011 A Lovesong for India: Tales from East and West
2018 At the End of the Century (stories)
(Note: screenplays not included)

The Modern Novel

The world-wide literary novel from early 20th Century onwards