Heat and Dust - by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The Booker Prize-winning novel--intertwining the narratives of two women, past and present, and their relationships to India--from the novelist, short story writer, and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Partly set in colonial India during the 1920s, Heat and Dust tells the story of Olivia, a beautiful woman suffocated by the propriety and social constraints of her position as the wife of an important English civil servant. Longing for passion and independence, Olivia is drawn into the spell of the Nawab, a minor Indian prince deeply involved in gang raids and criminal plots. She is intrigued by the Nawab's charm and aggressive courtship, and soon begins to spend most of her days in his company. But then she becomes pregnant, and unsure of the child's paternity, she is faced with a wrenching dilemma. Her reaction to the crisis humiliates her husband and outrages the British community, breeding a scandal that lives in collective memory long after her death, and will compel her future granddaughter to investigate their family's secrets.

Review Quotes

"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

"Her tussle with India is one of the richest treats of contemporary literature."
--The Guardian

"A writer of genius . . . a writer of world class--a master storyteller."
--Sunday Times

"Heat and Dust is an obscure and somber novel, tense with undisclosed judgments and meanings that crouch and whisper just beyond one's reach."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Crafted with technical skill as assured as it is unobtrusive, this delicately written novel is, because of its setting and its theme of Anglo-Indian relationships, reminiscent of E.M. Forster's great novel, A Passage to India. It does not suffer by comparison."
--The Washington Post

"A penetrating and compassionate love story, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has 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 London Times

About the Author

RUTH PRAWER JHABVALA, born in 1927, wrote several novels and short stories, and, in collaboration with James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, won two Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay (for Howards End and A Room with a View). She won the Booker Prize in 1975 for Heat and Dust. Her other numerous accolades include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, and an O. Henry Prize. She died in 2013.