The Author

RUTH PRAWER JHABVALA             

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was born in Cologne in 1927 into a comfortable middle-class Jewish family. The family fled the Nazis in 1939 and then emigrated to Britain.

During World War II she lived in London and began to speak English rather than German. Jhabvala became a British citizen in 1948. She graduated from London University and received her MA in English literature in 1951. At the age of 24 she married Cyrus Jhabvala, an Indian Parsi architect.

The couple moved to New Delhi in 1951 and they had three daughters. In India she started writing novels and short stories about her new life there, e.g. about Indian middle-class life and manners, the interaction between Westerners and Western life and Indians and Indian culture.

Her best known novel remains „Heat and Dust“ which won the Booker Prize in 1975. In the same year Jhabvala moved to New York and divided her time between India and The US. In 1986 she became a citizen of the United States.

Apart from her novels she’s best known for her work as scriptwriter for Merchant Ivory Productions for which she received Academy Awards.