Ruth Prawer Jhabvala – författare

This brilliant collection spans two worlds - the restless, aspiring society of New York''s Upper East Side and the world of India''s capital city, New Delhi, where the old India symbolized by Gandhi''s spinning wheel is giving way to one powered by industry and property development. A rich cast of characters inhabits these stories - Indian businessmen and holy women, students, society hostesses and ambitious young politicians; New Yorkers preoccupied with money yet also in search of meaning - anxious and often manipulative parents, alienated children, men and women struggling with their longings and failures and their complicated sex lives. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala''s quiet but insistent probing goes to the very heart of her characters, showing us all their complexities and contradictions. In these absorbing stories, there is a feeling of ambivalence, a subtle sensuality and a poignant sense of time passing. Like all great storytellers, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala suggests many questions but supplies no easy answers. This is a fascinating and wonderfully readable collection which is also a literary event.

Angel is dark and plain, introverted and submissive, a spontaneous composer of childish verses, wholly consumed by the wild, seductive spell of her cousin Lara - a beautiful, irresponsible creature who expresses herself in free-form dance.What begins as a tender and intimate attachment between two young girls deepens in adulthood into something complex and perilous, as Lara''s life spins in increasingly erratic circles while Angel''s passionate devotion to her remains undiminished. It is a feverish and impenetrable relationship, of reckless master and willing slave, one forged to shield both Angel and Lara from the harshness of their surroundings, as well as from the far greater terrors of the self. It is a relationship that will end in terror for the young women, and for their families.Set against the vivid, dream-like landscape of of Manhattan in the recent past, Poet and Dancer is an altogether unforgettable novel, written with the subtlety, wry humour and beauty that are the hallmarks of one of the twentieth century''s most brilliant novelists and storytellers.

Six colourful, comic characters inhabit A Backward Place. All but one are Westerners who have come to Delhi to experience an alternative way of life. But, far from being hippies, their ability to adapt to this exotic culture often leaves something to be desired. Etta, an aristocratic, faded beauty maintains her Parisian chic while Clarissa talks enthusiastically about the simple life but stops short of ever roughing it herself. On the other hand Bal, the one Indian protagonist, holds quite Western aspirations to Hollywood glamour.A Backward Place humorously explores contradictions in attitudes and lifestyles and the interplay between culture and individuality. But it is also a Dickensian drama, charting the highs and lows of everyday life against the enchanting backdrop of a bustling Indian city.

Prem is a recently married teacher who is neither very good at teaching nor at being married. He is promised an ally against his wife Indu, whom he regards with varying degrees of irritation, when his mother comes to visit. He soon finds, though, that maternal interference is far from helpful, and he receives comfort from an entirely unexpected quarter - his wife - as he discovers through her the joys of being a ''settled husband and householder''.From every page rise the heat, the smells, the flashing iridescent colours and the ceaseless rhythms of Indian life. And such is the strength of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala''s humorous and perceptive pen that this appealing tale of a young man trying to come to terms with marriage and maturity becomes more than a highly comic vignette of a particular society - it is also a reflection of a universal experience.

Taking us from a sweltering Indian rooftop at night to the marble halls of an ageing Bollywood star''s palace, this is a new collection of short stories from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.A wedding is planned between two innocents at a crumbling mansion of a grand Hudson Valley estate, while among the white-socked convent girls of post-colonial New Delhi a mixed-race couple contemplate their son''s alienation and the failure of hope. A young English girl infiltrates Fifth Avenue theatrical royalty and a lovely Broadway starlet exacts a clever, protracted revenge against her nemesis. Speaking of mortality and family rivalry, of the transfer of power from old to young, of love and the loss of innocence, this is a delicious assortment of fairytales and parables.

The beautiful, spoiled and bored Olivia, married to a civil servant, outrages society in the tiny, suffocating town of Satipur by eloping with an Indian prince. Fifty years later, her step-granddaughter goes back to the heat, the dust and the squalor of the bazaars to solve the enigma of Olivia''s scandal.''A superb book. A complex story line, handled with dazzling assurance . . . moving and profound. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has not only written a love story, she has also exposed the soul and nerve ends of a fascinating and compelling country. This is a book of cool, controlled brilliance. It is a jewel to be treasured'' THE TIMES

''A magnificent selection of the Booker winner''s short stories'' Sunday TimesWith an introduction by Anita Desai.Over the course of her glittering literary career, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala wrote some of the most wonderful novels of the twentieth century and screenplays to some of the most beloved films - but she was also a master of the short story form. This stunning new collection brings together the jewels in the crown of her writing: it is a showcase of astonishing storytelling power.