How I Became a Holy Mother
by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
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Someone once said that the definition of the highest art is that one should feel that life is this and not otherwise. I do not know of a writer living who gives that feeling with more unqualified certainty than Mrs Jhabvala.' So wrote CP Snow, reviewing this collection of the stories of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, an acknowledged queen of the genre. Set - of course in India, these stories are concerned not so much with Europeans in India as with Indians themselves. They are about universal human show more passions - yet interwoven with India itself. The heat, the vastness, the loneliness of India are all reflected in the lives of the people living in a country that is not so much an additional character as, often, the most central one. As always she tells her tales with compassion, penetration and humor, and the blithe gift of narration familiar to the hundreds of thousands who have seen the films - such as her own Heat and Dust - she scripted for the legendary Merchant Ivory team, and who have delighted in her novels. show lessTags
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In this collection of stories, Ruth Jhabvala has created a timeless array of characters whose lives reflect the vastness and loneliness not just of India, but of the world, as well. Her stories are sometimes touched with beauty, sometimes with sadness -- but always they are written with compassion as human and moving as the characters they depict.
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1,235 works; 64 members
University literature
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Books by Jewish Authors
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Author Information
58+ Works 4,150 Members
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was born in Cologne, Germany on May 7, 1927. She had to emigrate to England in 1939 with her family because of their Jewish faith. She earned a degree in English literature at London University. In 1951, she married an Indian architect, moved to India and raised three daughters. She began writing in 1955 and has written a show more dozen novels. Several novels were set in India such as The Nature of Passion, Esmond in India, Travelers and The Householder, which was also her first motion picture project. Shakespeare Wallah was her first collaboration on an original project. She also wrote screenplays such as Roseland and Jefferson in Paris. Her other fiction works included In Search of Love and Beauty, Three Continents, Poet and Dancer, Shards of Memory, East into Upper East and My Nine Lives: Chapters of a Possible Past. She won numerous awards including Britain's Booker Prize for her novel Heat and Dust in 1975, the BAFTA award for Best Screenplay for the filmed adaptation of Heat and Dust in 1984, an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for A Room With a View in 1986, the Best Screenplay Award from the New York Film Critics Circle for Mr. & Mrs. Bridge in 1990, an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Howards, the MacArthur Foundation Award in 1984 and the Writers Guild of America's Screen Laurel Award in 1994. She died on April 3, 2013 at the age of 85. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Perennial Library (P474)
Common Knowledge
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- On my 23rd birthday when I was fed up with London and all the rest of it- boy friends, marriages (two), jobs (modelling), best friends that are suddenly your best enemies - I had this letter from my girl friend Sophie who was... (show all) finding peace in an ashram in South India:
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