Novel
Heat and Dust
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala · 1975
Synopsis
An Englishwoman of the seventies travels to India with the letters of Olivia, her grandfather's first wife, and the memory of a scandal that has remained mysterious. In 1923, Olivia, married to Douglas, a British official posted to Satipur, was bored in the small world of the town's English; she began to see the neighbouring Nawab, a prince who received her for dinner in his palace. Half a century later, the narrator in her turn settles in Satipur, in a room rented from an Indian official, Inder Lal.
Context
The novel was published on 30 October 1975 and won the Booker Prize the same year. It sets two stories side by side, that of a woman of the twenties and that of a young relative by marriage, two generations later, the second reading the first's letters and retracing her journey. Its author, born in Germany and come to India through marriage, wrote from the position of an outsider: in an essay of 1971, she describes herself closing her windows, drawing the blinds and switching on the air conditioning, while knowing that she is on the back of an enormous beast made of poverty. She was reproached for this in India; she replied that anyone who does not call the country paradise on earth is judged anti-Indian, and that she did not have many readers there.
Who it is for
About two hundred pages, in Nicole Ménant's translation, published in 1983 and reissued in paperback. The two narratives, fifty years apart, alternate.
Prizes and reception
Booker Prize 1975, and its author is the only person to have won both this prize and an Oscar, which she received twice.
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