Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

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. 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.