Out of India: Selected Stories - Hardcover

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0719543754 ISBN 13: 9780719543753

Publisher: John Murray, 1987

Synopsis

'To live in India and be at peace, one must to a very considerable extent become Indian, and adopt Indian attitudes, habits, beliefs...' 'But how is this possible?' Ruth Prawer Jhabvala asks in a brilliant and candid introduction. 'Should one want to try to become something other than what one is?' Both the European and the Indian characters search for answers to these questions in fifteen acclaimed stories from the author's four previous collections.

About this title

About the Author

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was born in Germany of Polish parents and came to England in 1939 at the age of twelve. She graduated from Queen Mary College, London University, and married an architect. They lived in Delhi from 1951 to 1975. Since then they have divided their time between Delhi, New York and London. As well as her numerous novels and short stories, in collaboration with James Ivory and Ismail Merchant Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has written scripts for film and television, including A Room with a View and Howards End, both of which are Academy Award winners. She won the Booker Prize for Heat and Dust in 1975, the Neil Gunn International Fellowship in 1978, the MacArthur Foundation Award in 1984 and was made a CBE in the 1998 New Year's Honours List.

From Publishers Weekly

In plain, unassuming prose that doesn't altogether conceal the tears and laughter that give it urgency, the story of many different Indias unfolds in these 15 tales. There is Durga, "The Widow," who likes her husband better now that he is dead and has left her his fortune, which she vows, abortedly, never to let fall into the hands of his importuning relatives. There is the cabinet minister's wife, who, in "Rose Petals," keeps failing to conform to the demands of officialdom in the face of the far more exciting companionship of Biju, the elegant elderly gentleman, never married, who visits her every day. "Bombay" tells of "the Uncle," whose beloved niece marries a rich merchant, moves to his opulent home and, when the Uncle is so ill that he hasn't the strength to resist, packs his few rags and takes him to live with her in surroundings alien and abhorrent to him. All the stories, unrelated but focusing on the search for a quiet center that justifies disjointed and woebegone lives, are woven together in a glowing tapestry enriched by profound knowledge, humor and compassion. 25,000 first printing; $20,000 ad/promo. (May
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Murray
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0719543754
• ISBN 13: 9780719543753
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288