Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

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RPJ has been successful in two careers: as a novelist (a dozen titles) and short-story writer (eight collections), and as an author of film scripts (twenty-three), many of them adaptations from published fiction.
Watts, Janet. “Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Obituary”. The Guardian.
The two careers are, however, related. Her written fiction has moved from satirical social comedy about Indian middle-class society, to the impact of the myth of India on susceptible Westerners, to the social and personal whirlpools created when cultures meet, to the flourishing in rootless cultures of predatory, power-seeking individuals and movements. Her film scripts have followed a similar trajectory, while situating her chosen themes in a greater variety of settings and stories than her literary works.
Colour photo of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala at the home of her frequent collaborator, director James Ivory, in Claverack, New York, September 1981. She is wearring a tweed blazer and has her hands in her pockets. She is standing in a park in fall, and the sky is blue with many clouds. The are birch trees in the background are bare.

Milestones

7 May 1927
Ruth Prawer (later RPJ ) was born in Cologne, Germany.
Crane, Ralph J. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Twayne, 1992.
1
October 1975
RPJ published one of her most successful novels, Heat and Dust, another tale of the encounters of Englishwomen with India.
Whitaker’s Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons, 1988–2003.
(1988)
Sucher, Laurie. The Fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: The Politics of Passion. Macmillan, 1989.
245, 238
February 1983
The film of RPJ 's Heat and Dust, with her own screenplay, was released to mark the twenty-first anniversary of Merchant-Ivory Productions .
Long, Robert Emmet. The Films of Merchant Ivory. Harry N. Abrams, 1991.
120, 199
25 March 2013
The New Yorker carried a new short story by RPJ , only ten days before she died.
Gates, Anita. “Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Screenwriter, Dies at 85”. The New York Times.
Watts, Janet. “Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Obituary”. The Guardian.
3 April 2013
As a result of pulmonary complications, at the age of eighty-five RPJ died at her Manhattan home.
Gates, Anita. “Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Screenwriter, Dies at 85”. The New York Times.
Watts, Janet. “Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Obituary”. The Guardian.

Biography

Birth and Family

7 May 1927
Ruth Prawer (later RPJ ) was born in Cologne, Germany.
Crane, Ralph J. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Twayne, 1992.
1

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