Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Born on 7th May, 1927, is a winner of the prestigious Booker prize. She is a two-time Academy Award winning screenwriter. She is also a renowned novelist and a short stories writer. This Anglo-Indian writer was born in Cologne, Germany. Family of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was Jewish and in the year 1939 they moved to England from Germany. Her father was Polish-Jewish and her mother was German-Jewish. After the settlement of her family in Hendon, northwest London, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala attended the Country School. In the year 1948, she became a British citizen. She completed her M.A from Queen Mary College in London in English literature in the year 1951. She enjoyed reading the works of Dickens. After completing her M.A, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala married an Indian architect and came to India. In India, she spent the next 24 years of her life and in the year 1975 moved to New York City and in 1986 became a US citizen. Her three daughters are living in various parts of the world. After moving to New York, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala divided her time between the US and India. This writer is very popular for her insightful and witty portrayals of the lives of the people of contemporary Indian societies.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala started writing novels during the 1950`s while she was staying in India. She wrote several novels that were based on her new life. Some of her popular novels include "To Whom She Will", "Nature of Passion", "Get Ready for the Battle", "A Backward Place" and more. Her work was always regarded as of very high quality. She was not interested in India but she was only interested in herself during her stay in this country. Unlike other writers, she was not drawn by the ancestry of India. She had a different view for India and its traditional societies. Her first two novels earned her critical acclaim as in these two novels she has wonderfully depicted the Indian societies and its various manners in a comic way. During the mid 1960`s, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala started her career as a screenwriter with the association of Merchant Ivory Productions. She also wrote several screenplays as well as film adaptations of several novels that include E.M. Foster`s "A Room With a View" and Henry James`s "The Bostonians". For "A Room With a View", she won her first Academy Award. Later on in the year 1982 her novel "Heat and Dust" was also transformed into a film.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was more into feminine writing. However, unlike the contemporary writers of English literature of India, this author was not that outspoken. Apart from feminism, works of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was depicted ironically the manners and lives of the Indian societies, Europeans striving to understand India and clashes between the Western and the Eastern cultures. Her novels reflected a sign of detachment of the Western attitudes towards the old fashioned customs of India. However, the German-Jewish heritage of the author has never been projected as the focal point in her work. Her novels and stories are seen from a point of view of an outsider.

There are numerous novels and short stories written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and most of them are highly popular.

Some of the names of her selected novels and collections of short stories are as follows -

To Whom She Will (1955)

The Nature of Passion (1956)

Esmond in India (1958)

The Householder (1960),

Get Ready for Battle (1962)

Like Birds, Like Fishes (1963)

A Backward Place (1965)

A Stronger Climate (1968)

A New Dominion (1972)

Heat and Dust (1975)

An Experience of India (1971)

How I Became a Holy Mother and other stories (1976)

In Search of Love and Beauty (1983)

Out of India (1986)

Three Continents (1987)

Poet and Dancer (1993)

Shards of Memory (1995)

East into Upper East: Plain Tales from New York and New Delhi (1998)

My Nine Lives (2004)

Some of the popular screenplays written by this eminent writer are -

The Householder (1963)

Shakespeare Wallah (1965)

Bombay Talkie (1972)

Autobiography of a Princess (1975)

Roseland (1977)

The Europeans (1979)

Jane Austen in Manhattan (1980)

Heat and Dust (1983)

A Room with a View (1985)

Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990)

Howards End (1992)

The Remains of the Day (1993)

Jefferson in Paris (1995)

Surviving Picasso (1996)

The Golden Bowl (2000)

Le Divorce (2003)

The City of Your Final Destination (2008)

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has achieved several prominent awards and prizes. She won the Booker Prize, which is the most esteemed literary award, for her novel "Heat and Dust" in the year 1975. She won the Academy Award twice for best adapted screenplays for "A Room with a View" and for "Howards End". She is also the recipient of London Critics Circle Film Awards for "Heat and Dust". She has also received Writers Guild of America`s Screen Laurel Award.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is renowned for her microscopic views and studies of the high conventional world. Critics often compared her with Jane Austen for her early comedies. She is also known for her collaboration with the Merchant Ivory Productions for a long term as their films won a total of six Academy Awards.