Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Born	Ruth Prawer (1927-05-07)7 May 1927 Cologne, Prussia, Germany
Died	3 April 2013(2013-04-03) (aged 85) New York City, New York, U.S.
Period	1955–2013
Notable awards	1975, Man Booker Prize for Heat and Dust 1984, BAFTA for Heat and Dust 1987, Academy Award for A Room with a View 1993, Academy Award for Howards End
Spouse	Cyrus Jhabvala (m. 1951)

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, CBE (7 May 1927 – 3 April 2013) was a German-born British and American Booker prize-winning novelist, short story writer and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter. She is perhaps best known for her long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant.

After moving to India in 1951, she married Cyrus S. H. Jhabvala, an Indian-Parsi architect. The couple lived in New Delhi and had three daughters. Jhabvala began then to elaborate her experiences in India and wrote novels and tales on Indian subjects. She wrote a dozen novels, 23 screenplays, and eight collections of short stories and was made a CBE in 1998 and granted a joint fellowship by BAFTA in 2002 with Ivory and Merchant.^[1][2] She is the only person to have won both a Booker Prize and an Oscar.^[3]

Early life[edit]

Ruth Prawer was born in Cologne, Germany to Jewish parents Marcus and Eleanora (Cohn) Prawer.^[4] Marcus was a lawyer who moved to Germany from Poland to escape conscription and Eleanora's father was cantor of Cologne's largest synagogue.^[5][6] Her father was accused of communist links, arrested and released, and she witnessed the violence unleashed against the Jews during the Kristallnacht.^[5] The family was among the last group of refugees to flee the Nazi regime in 1939, emigrating to Britain.^[6] Her elder brother, Siegbert Salomon Prawer (1925–2012), an expert on Heinrich Heine and horror films, was fellow of The Queen's College and Taylor Professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford.^[6]

During World War II, Prawer lived in Hendon in London, experienced the Blitz and began to speak English rather than German. Charles Dickens' works and Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind kept her company through the war years and the latter book she read while taking refuge in air raid shelters during the Luftwaffe's bombing of London.^[7] She became a British citizen in 1948. The following year, her father died by suicide after discovering that 40 members of his family had died during the Holocaust.^[6] Prawer attended Hendon County School (now Hendon School) and then Queen Mary College, where she received an MA in English literature in 1951.^[6]

Literary career[edit]

Years in India[edit]

Jhabvala lived in India for 24 years from 1951. Her first novel, To Whom She Will, was published in 1955. It was followed by Esmond in India (1957), The Householder (1960) and Get Ready for the Battle (1963). The Householder, with a screenplay by Jhabvala, was filmed in 1963 by Merchant and Ivory. During her years in India she wrote scripts for the Merchant-Ivory duo for The Guru (1969) and The Autobiography of a Princess (1975). She collaborated with Ivory for the screenplays for Bombay Talkie (1970) and ABC After-school Specials: William - The Life and Times of William Shakespeare (1973).^[8]

In 1975, she won the Booker Prize for her novel Heat and Dust which was later adapted into a movie.^[9] That year, she moved to New York where she wrote The Place of Peace.^[8]

Jhabvala "remained ill at ease with India and all that it brought into her life." She wrote in an autobiographical essay, Myself in India (published in the London Magazine) that she found the "great animal of poverty and backwardness" made the idea and sensation of India intolerable to her, a "Central European with an English education and a deplorable tendency to constant self-analysis."^[10][11] Her early works in India dwell on the themes of romantic love and arranged marriages and are portraits of the social mores, idealism and chaos of the early decades of independent India. Writing of her in the New York Times, novelist Pankaj Mishra observed that "she was probably the first writer in English to see that India's Westernizing middle class, so preoccupied with marriage, lent itself well to Jane Austenish comedies of manners."^[10]

Life in the United States[edit]

Jhabvala moved to New York in 1975 and lived there until her death in 2013, becoming a naturalised citizen of the United States in 1986. She continued to write and many of her works including In Search of Love and Beauty (1983), Three Continents (1987), Shards of Memory (1995) and East Into Upper East: Plain Tales From New York and New Delhi (1998) portray the lives and predicaments of immigrants from post-Nazi and post-World War Europe. Many of these works feature India as a setting where her characters go in search of spiritual enlightenment only to emerge defrauded and exposed to the materialistic pursuits of the East.^[10] The New York Times Review of Books chose her Out of India (1986) as one of the best reads for that year.^[7]

In 2005 she published My Nine Lives: Chapters of a Possible Past with illustrations by her husband and the book was described as "her most autobiographical fiction to date".^[5]

Reception[edit]

Her literary works were well received with C. P. Snow, Rumer Godden and V. S. Pritchett describing her work as "the highest art", "a balance between subtlety, humour and beauty" and as being Chekhovian in its detached sense of comic self-delusion. Salman Rushdie described her as a "rootless intellectual" when he anthologised her in the Vintage Book of Indian Writing while John Updike described her an "initiated outsider".^[5]

Jhabvala was initially assumed to be an Indian among the reading public because of her perceptive portrayals of the nuances of Indian lifestyles. Later, the revelation of her true identity led to falling sales of her books in India and made her a target of accusations about "her old-fashioned colonial attitudes".^[3]

Jhabvala's last published story was "The Judge's Will", which appeared in The New Yorker on 25 March 2013.^[12]

Merchant Ivory Productions[edit]

In 1963, Jhabvala was approached by James Ivory and Ismail Merchant to write a screenplay for their debut black-and-white feature The Householder based on her 1960 novel. During their first encounter, Merchant later said Jhabvala, seeking to avoid them, pretended to be the housemaid when they visited. The film, released by Merchant Ivory Productions in 1963 and starring Shashi Kapoor and Leela Naidu, met with critical praise and marked the beginning of a partnership that resulted in over 20 films.^[13]

The Householder was followed by Shakespeare Wallah (1965), another critically acclaimed film. There followed a series of films including Roseland (1977), Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures (1978), The Europeans (1979), Jane Austen in Manhattan (1980), Quartet (1981), The Courtesans of Bombay (1983) and The Bostonians (1984). The Merchant Ivory production of Heat and Dust in 1983 won Jhabvala a BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay the following year.^[8]

She won her first Academy Award for her screenplay for A Room with a View (1986) and won a second in the same category for Howards End six years later.^[9] She was nominated for a third Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay the following year for The Remains of the Day.^[3]

Her other films with Merchant and Ivory include Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990), Jefferson in Paris (1995), Surviving Picasso (1996), A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (1998) (the screenplay for which she co-authored with Ivory), The Golden Bowl (2000) and The City of Your Final Destination (2009) which was adapted from the eponymous novel by Peter Cameron and was her last screenplay.^[8] Le Divorce which she co-wrote with Ivory was the last movie that featured the trio of Merchant, Ivory and Jhabvala before Merchant's death that year.^[14]

The Merchant-Ivory duo was acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest collaboration between a director and a producer although Jhabvala, too, was a part of the trio from the very beginning. She introduced the composer Richard Robbins, who went on to score music for almost every production by Merchant-Ivory beginning with The Europeans in 1979, to the duo after meeting him while he was the director of Mannes College of Music, New York.^[15] Madame Sousatzka (1988) was the one film she wrote which was not produced by Merchant Ivory.

Some of Jhabvala's scripts generated controversy. Jefferson in Paris attracted charges of historical inaccuracies and racism while Surviving Picasso ran into trouble with the Picasso estate that denied them permission to use his paintings in the film.^[3]

Personal life[edit]

In 1951, Prawer married Cyrus Shavaksha Hormusji Jhabvala,^[16] an Indian Parsi architect and, later, head of the School of Planning and Architecture.^[13][1] The couple moved into a house in Delhi's Civil Lines where they raised three daughters: Ava, Firoza and Renana.^[13][1] In 1975 Jhabvala moved to New York and divided her time between India and the United States. In 1986, she became a naturalised citizen of the United States.^[8]

Death[edit]

Jhabvala died in her home in New York City on 3 April 2013 at the age of 85. James Ivory reported that her death was caused by complications from a pulmonary disorder.^[17][18][19] Reacting to her death, Merchant Ivory Productions noted that Jhabvala had "been a beloved member of the Merchant Ivory family since 1960, comprising one-third of our indomitable trifecta that included director James Ivory and the late producer Ismail Merchant" and that her death was "a significant loss to the global film community".^[20]

Awards[edit]

Winner[edit]

• 2003: O. Henry Prize Winner for "Refuge in London"^[21]
• 1994: Writers Guild of America's Screen Laurel Award^[22]
• 1992: Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay – Howards End^[21]
• 1990: Best Screenplay Award from the New York Film Critics Circle for Mr. and Mrs. Bridge^[22]
• 1987: Writers Guild of America – Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for: A Room with a View^[21]
• 1987: Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay – A Room with a View^[21]
• 1984: BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay – Heat and Dust^[22]
• 1984: London Critics Circle Film Awards – Screenwriter of the Year for: Heat and Dust^[21]
• 1984: MacArthur Fellowship^[22]
• 1979: Neil Gunn Prize^[21]
• 1975: Booker Prize – Heat and Dust^[22]

Nominated[edit]

• 1993: Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay – The Remains of the Day^[22]
• 1993: Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay – The Remains of the Day
• 1993: BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay – The Remains of the Day
• 1992: Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay – Howards End
• 1992: BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay – Howards End
• 1986: BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay – A Room with a View

Bibliography[edit]

Novels and short story collections[edit]

• To Whom She Will: a Novel (1955; published in the United States as Amrita).
• The Nature of Passion (1956).
• Esmond in India (1958)
• The Householder (1960)
• Get Ready for Battle (1962)
• Like Birds, Like Fishes (1963)
• A Backward Place (1965)
• A Stronger Climate (1968)
• An Experience of India (1971)
• A New Dominion (1972; published in the United States as Travelers)
• Heat and Dust (1975)
• How I Became a Holy Mother and other stories (1976)
• In Search of Love and Beauty (1983)
• Out of India (1986)
• Three Continents (1987)
• Poet and Dancer (1993)
• Shards of Memory (1995)
• East Into Upper East: Plain Tales from New York and New Delhi (1998)
• My Nine Lives (2004)
• A Lovesong for India: Tales from East and West (2011)

Short stories[edit]

Title	Year	First published	Reprinted/collected
The Judge's Will	2013	The New Yorker, 25 March 2013[23]

Critical studies and reviews[edit]

Anthologies and encyclopedias[edit]

• Prawer Jhabvala, Ruth (2000). "Passion". In Bausch, Richard; Cassill, R. V. Norton Anthology of Short Fiction (6th ed.). New York: W. W. Norton. pp. 801–813. ISBN 978-0-39397-508-6. 
• Prawer Jhabvala, Ruth (2005). "Two more under the Indian sun". In Mishra, Pankaj. India in Mind: An Anthology. New York: Vintage Books. pp. 108–130. ISBN 978-0-37572-745-0. 
• Prawer Jhabvala, Ruth (1999). "An experience of India". In Ross, Robert. Colonial and Postcolonial Fiction in English: An Anthology. New York: Garland. pp. 189–209. ISBN 978-0-81531-431-8. 
• Serafin, Steven, ed. (1999). "Ruth Prawer Jhabvala". Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century. Vol. 4 (L-Z) (3rd ed.). Farmington Hills, Michigan: St. James Press. ISBN 978-1-55862-377-4. 

Screenwriting[edit]

• Bailur, Jayanti (1992). Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: Fiction and Film. New Delhi: Arnold Publishers. 
• Katz, Susan Bullington, ed. (2000). "Ruth Prawer Jhabvala". Conversations with Screenwriters. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann. pp. 1–8. ISBN 978-0-32500-295-8. 

Other[edit]

• Crane, Ralph J. (1992). Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. New York: Twayne. ISBN 978-0-80577-030-8. 
• Crane, Ralph J. (1991). Passages to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers. ISBN 978-8-12071-355-0. 
• Rai, Sudha (1992). Homeless by Choice: Naipaul, Jhabvala, Rushdie and India. Jaipur: Printwell. ISBN 978-8-17044-241-7. 
• Shepherd, Ronald (1994). Ruth Prawer Jhabvala in India: The Jewish Connection. Delhi: Chanakya Publications. ISBN 978-8-17001-096-8. 
• Sucher, Laurie (1989). The Fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: The Politics of Passion. Basingstoke: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-33342-196-3. 

Selected screenplays[edit]

Year	Title	Other notes
2009	The City of Your Final Destination	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Peter Cameron
2003	Le Divorce	co-written by James Ivory, adapted from the novel by Diane Johnson
2000	The Golden Bowl	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Henry James
1998	A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Kaylie Jones
1996	Surviving Picasso	screenplay
1995	Jefferson in Paris	written by
1993	The Remains of the Day	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro
1992	Howards End	screenplay, adapted from the novel by E. M. Forster
1990	Mr. and Mrs. Bridge	screenplay, adapted from the novels by Evan S. Connell ("Mr. Bridge" & "Mrs. Bridge")
1988	Madame Sousatzka	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Bernice Rubens. Directed by John Schlesinger
1985	A Room with a View	screenplay, adapted from the novel by E. M. Forster
1984	The Bostonians	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Henry James
1983	Heat and Dust	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Jhabvala
1981	Quartet	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Jean Rhys
1980	Jane Austen in Manhattan	written by, inserted libretto "Sir Charles Grandison" by Jane Austen
1979	The Europeans	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Henry James
1978	Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures	written by
1977	Roseland	story and screenplay
1975	Autobiography of a Princess	written by
1970	Bombay Talkie	screenplay
1969	The Guru	screenplay
1965	Shakespeare Wallah	screenplay
1963	The Householder	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Jhabvala

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

• Prawer Jhabvala, Ruth (26 June 2006). "Innocence". The New Yorker. 
• Horne, Philip. "'It works diagonally': A Conversation with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala on The Golden Bowl and the Art of Adaptation". Merchant Ivory. Archived from the original on 2 May 2014. 
• Williams, Phillip. "Rewriting Literature: A Conversation With Ruth Prawer Jhabvala". MovieMaker. Archived from the original on 3 August 2001. 
• "Desert Island Discs". BBC Radio 4. 24 January 1999. 
• Freeman, Catherine. "Ruth Prawer Jhabvala CBE remembered". The Royal Society of Literature.