Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (b. 1927), an Anglo-Indian born in Germany to Polish-German-Jewish parents, married a Parsi architect with whom she moved to India after completing her education in England. Later she moved to New York.

She started her writing career as a novelist in the 1950s and went on to become a screenwriter in Merchant-Ivory productions.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s earlier works are usually about Europeans getting involved in, and trying to understand India. Her other favourite themes is the clash between Eastern and Western cultures, and the role of the past in influencing the present.

She won the Booker prize in 1975 for Heat and Dust and the Oscar twice for best screenplay.

The list below is not exhaustive. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has written several other novels, collections of short stories and innumerable screenplays.

Works

• Meet Yourself at the Doctor
• To Whom She Will
• The Nature of Passion
• Esmond in India
• The Householder
• To Whom She Will
• Get Ready for the Battle
• Like Birds, Like Fishes
• A Backward Place
• A Stronger Climate
• Heat and Dust
• Is Search of Love and Beauty
• Shards of Memory
• East Into Upper East