Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: Heat and Dust

Though famous for her Oscar-winning Merchant Ivory screenplays, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s true passion was fiction. Having fled Nazi Germany for Britain, she later moved to India, writing in English as her adopted language. Her Booker Prize-winning novel, «Heat and Dust» (1975), juxtaposes the lives of two Englishwomen across the 1920s and 1970s, exploring a scandalous, cross-cultural affair. Culturally displaced, Jhabvala eventually settled in New York. This course pairs a close reading of the novel with a screening of the film adaptation, which features Jhabvala’s own screenplay. Level C1 required.