Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Graham Greene, the West, and Human Factors
- 2 Imperialism and Sentiment: Paul Scott's Raj Quartet and the Mountbattens
- 3 Forster's Views on Race and Class and Moral Imperatives
- 4 Kipling on Goodness and the Great Game
- 5 Political Perspectives and Moral Fervour in Joseph Conrad
- 6 Henry James on Personal Relations: Looking Beneath and Beyond
- 7 The Heroic Vitalism of D. H. Lawrence
- 8 James Joyce and the Life of Dubliners
- 9 Evelyn Waugh and the City of Aquatint
- 10 Virginia Woolf and Time's Chariot
- 11 Robert Graves' Sense of History
- 12 Christopher Isherwood and Berlin in Decline
- 13 Aldous Huxley and the Dangers of a World Without Ideas
- 14 Somerset Maugham and the Strengths of Simplicity
- 15 Agatha Christie and the Magic of Murder
- 16 Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes
- 17 Galsworthy and Social and Sexual Transition
- 18 The Unchanging World of P. G. Wodehouse
- 19 Frank Richards and the Preposterous Excesses of Billy Bunter
- 20 John Buchan and a Life beyond Letters
- 21 Richmal crompton's William and the Charms of the Unorthodox
- 22 Edith Nesbit and the Pleasures of Childhood
- 23 The Excessive Vitalism of Bernard Shaw
- 24 The Melancholia of Katherine Mansfield
- 25 J. M. Barrie and the Boy Who Never Grew Up
- 26 Kenneth Grahame's Singular Mr Toad
- 27 The Wicked Worlds of George Orwell
- 28 Enid Blyton's Evocations of Britain
- 29 Tolkien and the Pursuit and Achievement of Power
- 30 Transitions in the Worlds of C. S. Lewis
- 31 Noël Coward and the Games People Play
- 32 Rattigan's Sensitivities
- 33 Lawrence Durrell and the Uses of Sexuality
- 34 Anthony Powell and the Hollow Heart of the New England
- 35 Angus Wilson and the Pursuit of Values
- 36 William Golding and the Limits of Civilization
- 37 Anthony Burgess and the Energy of the Outsider
- 38 The Ineffable Angst of Samuel Beckett
- 39 Pinter and the Politics of Literature
- 40 Ian Fleming's Establishment and its Guardian
- 41 Le Carré's Hard-pressed Concept of Honour
- 42 Beyond Shadows – Naipaul's Brilliant Bad Temper
- 43 Muriel Spark and Remembrances of Mortality
- 44 The Bizarre Worlds of J. G. Ballard
- 45 Simon Raven's Extravagant Decency
- 46 Salman Rushdie's Magic
- 47 Vikram Seth's Romanticism
- 48 Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Pictures of Past and Present
- 49 The Relentless Anguish of Kazuo Ishiguro
- 50 Gerald Durrell's Human Zoos
- 51 T. E. Lawrence and the Limits of Commitment
48 - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Pictures of Past and Present
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Graham Greene, the West, and Human Factors
- 2 Imperialism and Sentiment: Paul Scott's Raj Quartet and the Mountbattens
- 3 Forster's Views on Race and Class and Moral Imperatives
- 4 Kipling on Goodness and the Great Game
- 5 Political Perspectives and Moral Fervour in Joseph Conrad
- 6 Henry James on Personal Relations: Looking Beneath and Beyond
- 7 The Heroic Vitalism of D. H. Lawrence
- 8 James Joyce and the Life of Dubliners
- 9 Evelyn Waugh and the City of Aquatint
- 10 Virginia Woolf and Time's Chariot
- 11 Robert Graves' Sense of History
- 12 Christopher Isherwood and Berlin in Decline
- 13 Aldous Huxley and the Dangers of a World Without Ideas
- 14 Somerset Maugham and the Strengths of Simplicity
- 15 Agatha Christie and the Magic of Murder
- 16 Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes
- 17 Galsworthy and Social and Sexual Transition
- 18 The Unchanging World of P. G. Wodehouse
- 19 Frank Richards and the Preposterous Excesses of Billy Bunter
- 20 John Buchan and a Life beyond Letters
- 21 Richmal crompton's William and the Charms of the Unorthodox
- 22 Edith Nesbit and the Pleasures of Childhood
- 23 The Excessive Vitalism of Bernard Shaw
- 24 The Melancholia of Katherine Mansfield
- 25 J. M. Barrie and the Boy Who Never Grew Up
- 26 Kenneth Grahame's Singular Mr Toad
- 27 The Wicked Worlds of George Orwell
- 28 Enid Blyton's Evocations of Britain
- 29 Tolkien and the Pursuit and Achievement of Power
- 30 Transitions in the Worlds of C. S. Lewis
- 31 Noël Coward and the Games People Play
- 32 Rattigan's Sensitivities
- 33 Lawrence Durrell and the Uses of Sexuality
- 34 Anthony Powell and the Hollow Heart of the New England
- 35 Angus Wilson and the Pursuit of Values
- 36 William Golding and the Limits of Civilization
- 37 Anthony Burgess and the Energy of the Outsider
- 38 The Ineffable Angst of Samuel Beckett
- 39 Pinter and the Politics of Literature
- 40 Ian Fleming's Establishment and its Guardian
- 41 Le Carré's Hard-pressed Concept of Honour
- 42 Beyond Shadows – Naipaul's Brilliant Bad Temper
- 43 Muriel Spark and Remembrances of Mortality
- 44 The Bizarre Worlds of J. G. Ballard
- 45 Simon Raven's Extravagant Decency
- 46 Salman Rushdie's Magic
- 47 Vikram Seth's Romanticism
- 48 Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Pictures of Past and Present
- 49 The Relentless Anguish of Kazuo Ishiguro
- 50 Gerald Durrell's Human Zoos
- 51 T. E. Lawrence and the Limits of Commitment
Summary
Like the lady who married Vikram Seth's great uncle, Ruth Prawer was a Jewish refugee from Hitler's Germany. However, the Indian she married, a Parsi architect, returned to India, so that it was as an Indian that she established herself as a writer. Indeed The Householder, her best known novel before she won the Booker Prize, had an emphatically Indian subject, a young man who takes time to fall in love with the wife to whom he had been married by arrangement.
Much of her work, however, was British in subject matter, if not in outlook. Esmond in India, for instance, is about an Englishman working in India after independence, who nevertheless behaves as though he could get away with anything. He is married to an Indian, but has an English mistress, and also takes advantage of various Indian women to whom his race marks him out as something special. Jhabvala's exposure of a certain type of Englishman abroad, after Empire but with a sense of privilege, parallels Paul Scott's account of the same phenomenon in a brilliant vignette in The Jewel in the Crown.
Jhabvala only really sprang into prominence as a novelist, however, with Heat and Dust, which won her the Booker Prize in 1975. This was a masterly counterpointing of inter-racial affairs between Indian men and English women.
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- Twentieth Century ClassicsReflections on Writers and their Times, pp. 201 - 204Publisher: Foundation BooksPrint publication year: 2013