My Nine Lives : Chapters Of A Possible Past

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

ISBN 10: 0719561825 / ISBN 13: 9780719561825

Published by John Murray, London, 2004

About this Item

1st printing, unread, not price clipped, no owner's name or other inscription, D/j protected by a clear removable sleeve. Peter Parker's Sunday Times review of 19th June, 2004 laid in. This copy purchased ne by me upon publication.

Seller Inventory # 049525

Bibliographic Details

• Title: My Nine Lives : Chapters Of A Possible Past
• Publisher: John Murray, London
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0719561825
• ISBN 13: 9780719561825
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a novelist of unequalled insight, grace and emotional power. My Nine Lives represents a new and fascinating strand in her outstanding canon of work: as she puts it, the 'potentially autobiographical'. Behind her poised, eloquent prose Ruth Prawer Jhabvala deftly tussles with the existential question of how destiny is shaped. In each chapter of My Nine Lives the narrator faces a startlingly different fate. One story takes place in India, the next in New York; in one the narrator is a grown married woman, in another a dependent daughter, in one a scholar, in another an uneducated ingenue. But a complex thread interlinks the seemingly disparate stories: the 'I' of each chapter has Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Jewish, Central European background. Here are nine different answers to the central question: what would happen if I were granted an alternative life?

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 the Indian architect C.S.H. Jhabvala. 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 Fellowship in 1984 and was made a CBE in the 1998 New Year's Honours List.