Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

"In this book, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala explores nine possible lives. While each is located in deeply familiar territory, whether England, India, or America, and often overlaid with that essential Central European family background, each life is born of startlingly different origins and each reveals a different destiny. Here are nine different answers to the central question: what would happen if I were granted an alternative life?"--BOOK JACKET.

A young man named Henry sits down with his grandmother, a genial lady still called Baby by everyone, in the Manhattan townhouse where he has lived all his life with her, to record the history of a spiritual movement that has woven itself into the fabric of their family's lives for four generations. What unfolds is a mesmerizing family saga: the imperious great-grandmother Elsa and her husband, an Indian poet, whose marriage is as unconventional as the movement they help to found; Baby, their cheerfully pragmatic daughter, married to the aloof English diplomat Graeme; bemused and brooding Renata, Baby and Graeme's daughter, married to an idle dreamer; and finally Henry, Renata's son, who in many ways bears the legacy of all that has gone before. Their lives - and that of the movement's elusive yet ineluctable founder, known only as the Master - intertwine, diverge, and collide with each other in a masterfully orchestrated story spanning the twentieth century and several continents.

Set in India, HEAT AND DUST is the story of Olivia, a beautiful, spoiled, bored English colonial wife in the 1920s who is drawn inexorably into the spell of the Nawab, a minor Indian prince deeply involved in plots and intrigues. Olivia outrages the tiny, suffocating town where her husband is a civil servant by eloping with the captivating Nawab. It is also the story of Olivia's step-granddaughter who, fifty years later, is drawn to India by her fascination with the letters left behind by the now dead older woman, and by her obsession with solving the enigma of Olivia's scandal. A penetrating and compassionate love story, this brilliant novel immerses the reader in the heat, dust, and squalor of India, while providing a compelling mixture of the spiritual and the sensual.

India's ambience affects the lives of group of westerners searching for more meaningful lives.

10 stories of life in New Dehli and one story set in England, by a satirist of Indian middle-class mores. For contents, see Author Catalog.

An Englishman living in India brings havoc to two aristocratic families after daughters of each family fall in love with him.

Stories and excerpts of novels from India since the country attained its independence in 1947. The subjects range from religious strife, to the assault on the senses of the many people one is surrounded by.