Books by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

The beautiful, spoiled and bored Olivia, married to a civil servant, outrages society in the tiny, suffocating town of Satipur by eloping with an Indian prince. Fifty years later, her step-granddaughter goes back to the heat, the dust and the squalor of the bazaars to solve the enigma of Olivia's scandal.'A superb book. A complex story line, handled with dazzling assurance . . . moving and profound. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has not only written a love story, she has also exposed the soul and nerve ends of a fascinating and compelling country. This is a book of cool, controlled brilliance. It is a jewel to be treasured' THE TIMES

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 commitment.

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. Etta, an aristocratic, faded beauty maintains her Parisian chic while Clarissa talks enthusiastically about the simple life but stops short of ever roughing it herself. On the other hand Bal, the one Indian protagonist, holds quite Western aspirations to Hollywood glamour.A Backward Place humorously explores contradictions in attitudes and lifestyles and the interplay between culture and individuality. But it is also a Dickensian drama, charting the highs and lows of everyday life against the enchanting backdrop of a bustling Indian city.

This brilliant collection spans two worlds - the restless, aspiring society of New York's Upper East Side and the world of India's capital city, New Delhi, where the old India symbolized by Gandhi's spinning wheel is giving way to one powered by industry and property development. A rich cast of characters inhabits these stories - Indian businessmen and holy women, students, society hostesses and ambitious young politicians; New Yorkers preoccupied with money yet also in search of meaning - anxious and often manipulative parents, alienated children, men and women struggling with their longings and failures and their complicated sex lives. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's quiet but insistent probing goes to the very heart of her characters, showing us all their complexities and contradictions. In these absorbing stories, there is a feeling of ambivalence, a subtle sensuality and a poignant sense of time passing. Like all great storytellers, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala suggests many questions but supplies no easy answers. This is a fascinating and wonderfully readable collection which is also a literary event.

Taking us from a sweltering Indian rooftop at night to the marble halls of an ageing Bollywood star's palace, this is a new collection of short stories from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.A wedding is planned between two innocents at a crumbling mansion of a grand Hudson Valley estate, while among the white-socked convent girls of post-colonial New Delhi a mixed-race couple contemplate their son's alienation and the failure of hope. A young English girl infiltrates Fifth Avenue theatrical royalty and a lovely Broadway starlet exacts a clever, protracted revenge against her nemesis. Speaking of mortality and family rivalry, of the transfer of power from old to young, of love and the loss of innocence, this is a delicious assortment of fairytales and parables.