Ruth Prawer Jhabvala published twelve novels including the Booker Prize-winning
Heat and Dust and five volumes of short stories. She also wrote more than a dozen screenplays, including
Howard's End and
A Room with a View, for both of which she received an Academy Award. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala died in 2013.
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.
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 wryly 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.
'Her tussle with India is one of the richest treats of contemporary literature' Guardian
'An Indian Dickens' New Statesman
''Deliciously comic' Daily Telegraph
A classic novel from the Booker-winning author of
Heat and Dust - an Indian
Vanity Fair.
