Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Heat and Dust

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, a twentieth century expatriate writer of Polish-Jewish origins and British upbringing, who chose to make India her home since 1951 for more than two decades, has made her mark as writer of novel, story, screenplay, non-fiction, etc, which have brought her worldwide recognition and prestigious awards and fellowships both in India and abroad. Her work offers a site for the intersection of cultures, especially those of India and Europe/America. Hear and Dust (1975), Jhabvala’s booker winning and most well-known novel, which ensured her celebrity status in the literary world, is a delightful interrogation of the imperial and post-imperial discourses vis-a-vis India and England, as presented through the parallel lives of two English women in India, placed in two distinct historical contexts across half-a-century, in which the young narrator is set to restore the lost story of her predecessor from the ‘heat and dust’ of passion and oblivion. The present book provides a thorough and illuminating study of the text and examines it from such aspects as race relations, man-woman relations, themes, form, structure, and technique. In addition, it provides useful background materials related to Jhabvala’s life, works, her vision of India, and a detailed critical summary of the entire text, along with a select bibliography and sample questions. The book will be immensely useful for students, scholars and teachers in the area.