Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Heat and Dust (1975)

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala died in April 2013, aged 85.  The Telegraph obituary of her was subtitled “more than Heat and Dust”. Jhabvala did write more than Heat and Dust: she wrote twelve novels, 23 screenplays and 8 collections of short stories.  She also remains, to this day, the only person to have won the Booker Prize and an Oscar (indeed she won two, both for Best Adapted Screenplay: A Room With A View in 1986 and Howards End in 1992).  Among her novels though, Heat and Dust is almost certainly the most well known, so perhaps the subtitle is justified in terms of making people aware of her other achievements.

Jhabvala was born in Germany, fled the Nazis with her family to north London, married an Indian architect and moved with him to India in 1951, where she lived for 24 years.  She explained in interviews that she felt like an outsider everywhere she went, especially while living in India, and the protagonist of Heat and Dust also expresses the sentiment of being fascinated by India, yet feeling like an outsider.  The unnamed protagonist is there to research the history of her step-grandmother Olivia, an Englishwoman who caused a scandal during the days of the Raj by leaving her husband after getting pregnant by an Indian prince.  Through flashbacks the reader sees the story from Olivia’s point of view, her narrative intertwining with that of the narrator.

Heat and Dust is a relatively short novel compared to some of the Booker winners that I’ve read so far, but despite its brevity it beautifully expresses Jhabvala’s fascination and frustration with India.  Her protagonist is captivated by a country with outstanding natural beauty but is also horrified at the apparent lack of humanity among some of the people that she encounters there; a dying beggar woman is ignored by everyone until the narrator intervenes.  She describes dressing as an Indian woman but still getting called names by the children in the streets (something that Jhabvala also described happening to her).  The narrator is not the only outsider in the novel; Chid, the British would-be ascetic who ultimately relapses into his Western ways, Olivia, the spoilt British Raj trophy wife, Leelavati, the dying beggar cast out by her family.  All these outsiders try in their own way to become part of their respective communities, but ultimately fail.  This reflects Jhabvala’s own experience; she left India for good not long after writing Heat and Dust and spent the rest of her life in New York.

Heat and Dust tells a fascinating story that the reader only experiences glimpses of; rather like Jhabvala’s India, it does not give up its secrets to outsiders but I would say that it is definitely worth making the attempt to find them.