Heat and Dust
Synopsis
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.
Author Biography
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was born in May 1927 in Germany. In 1975, Jhabvala won Britain’s Booker Prize for her novel Heat and Dust, and in 1984 she won a BAFTA award for Best Screenplay for the Merchant Ivory filmed adaptation of Heat and Dust. In 1986, she received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for A Room With a View and in 1990 she won the Best Screenplay Award from the New York Film Critics Circle for Mr.& Mrs. Bridge. Jhabvala received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Howards End and was nominated for an Oscar for her adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. She won the Neil Gunn International Fellowship in 1978, the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1984 and was made a CBE in the 1998 New Year’s Honours List.
