Here's a bit of trivia for you. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is the only person to have won both a Booker Prize and an Oscar! If you don't know her fiction (and to be honest I have yet to read her), you probably have seen one of the many films for which she wrote the screenplay. I adore Merchant Ivory films (they are so lush and beautiful). She collaborated with James Ivory and Ismail Merchant for more than twenty films. It was her screenplays for A Room with a View and Howards End (both Merchant Ivory productions) which won Oscars. And of course it's Heat and Dust which, as you can see by the cover here, that claimed the Booker in 1975.
I always assumed that Jhabvala was herself Indian, but I have only just learned she was actually born in Germany of Polish parents. She was Jewish and emigrated to Britain right before WWII. In the mid-1950s she made her home in India where she remained for more than twenty years. Finally in 1975 she emigrated to the US and became a citizen. I had no idea, but she passed away earlier this year in April.
Surely a Booker winner shouldn't be a lost in the stacks book, but I can't tell you how many times I have pulled this book from the shelves to look at and then slid it back in to its place. I don't think I've ever seen anyone in the (granted my own quiet corner) blogging world write about her work, so why not throw a little attention her way. It also happens to be one of the books included in 500 Great Books by Women (which I own and often refer to for reading ideas) edited by Erica Bauermeister. The entry for this title reads:
"Heat and Dust views India through the lives of two English women living fifty years apart. Olivia is the first wife of an English government official assigned to India in the 1920s. The unnamed narrator the story is the young granddaughter of the same official by a later wife who, intrigued by family rumors about Olivia, travels to India seeking answers to Olivia's mysterious existence. How, in a segregated society, did Olivia meet an Indian prince of questionable character, and why did she leave her husband for him? What happened to her afterwards? As the narrator stays in the town where Olivia lived and visits places that influenced Olivia's life, we witness India's past through Olivia's letters and journals and the narrator's imagination. For Olivia, removed from the day-to-day existence of the Indian people, India "was like being not in a different part of this world but in another world altogether, in another reality." In contrast, the narrator sublets a room that shares a courtyard with an Indian family and learns much about their life. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala shows us both pre- and post-independent India, exposing the similarities and differences of India's impact on each of these women."
Maybe I am in the mood for some good historical fiction (or just plain old really good fiction), or it's my general interest in India (see yesterday's post), but the story is hugely appealing to me. It begins . . .
"Shortly after Olivia went away with the Newab, Beth Crawford returned from Simla. This was in September, 1923. Beth had to go down to Bombay to meet the boat on which her sister Tressie was arriving. Tressie was coming out to spend the cold season with the Crawfords. They had arranged all sorts of visits and expeditions for her, but she stayed mostly in Satipur because of Douglas. They went riding together and played croquet and tennis and did her best to be good company for him."