Taking us from a sweltering Indian rooftop at night to the marble halls of an ageing Bollywood star's palace, this is a new collection of short stories from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. A wedding is planned between two innocents at a crumbling mansion of a grand Hudson Valley estate, while among the white-socked convent girls of post-colonial New Delhi a mixed-race couple contemplate their son's alienation and the failure of hope. A young English girl infiltrates Fifth Avenue theatrical royalty and a lovely Broadway starlet exacts a clever, protracted revenge against her nemesis. Speaking of mortality and family rivalry, of the transfer of power from old to young, of love and the loss of innocence, this is a delicious assortment of fairytales and parables.

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.

Angel is dark and plain, introverted and submissive, a spontaneous composer of childish verses, wholly consumed by the wild, seductive spell of her cousin Lara - a beautiful, irresponsible creature who expresses herself in free-form dance. What begins as a tender and intimate attachment between two young girls deepens in adulthood into something complex and perilous, as Lara's life spins in increasingly erratic circles while Angel's passionate devotion to her remains undiminished. It is a feverish and impenetrable relationship, of reckless master and willing slave, one forged to shield both Angel and Lara from the harshness of their surroundings, as well as from the far greater terrors of the self. It is a relationship that will end in terror for the young women, and for their families. Set against the vivid, dream-like landscape of of Manhattan in the recent past, Poet and Dancer is an altogether unforgettable novel, written with the subtlety, wry humour and beauty that are the hallmarks of one of the twentieth century's most brilliant novelists and storytellers.

The beautiful, spoiled and bored Olivia, married to a civil servant, outrages society in the tiny, suffocating town of Satipur by eloping with an Indian prince. Fifty years later, her step-granddaughter goes back to the heat, the dust and the squalor of the bazaars to solve the enigma of Olivia's scandal. 'A superb book. A complex story line, handled with dazzling assurance ...moving and profound. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has not only written a love story, she has also exposed the soul and nerve ends of a fascinating and compelling country. This is a book of cool, controlled brilliance. It is a jewel to be treasured' THE TIMES

Like Jhumpa Lahriri, Monica Ali and Arundhati Roy, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has long captured the Western-Indian experience. In this expansive story collection, Jhabvala continues her lifelong meditation on East and West. Set in India, England, and New York City, A Lovesong for India reveals what unites us across oceans, cultures, and lifetimes. Remarkable and unwavering, this collection is the hallmark of Jhabvala's celebrated career and a testament to her "balance, subtlety, wry humor, and beauty" -The New York Times

Three Continents is a tale of the clash between the easternized West and the westernized East. Twins Harriet and Michael -- spoiled, quixotic, and extremely wealthy -- have eschewed the vapid world of cocktail parties and adulteries that seems to be their inheritance. In constantly searching to complete themselves, they become the perfect fodder for the charismatic Rawul of Dhoka and his sinister Sixth World Movement.

Hailed as one of the best books of 1998 by the Los Angeles Times, this group of twelve short stories was written over the past twenty years. From the steamy streets of New Delhi to New Yorks tony Upper East Side, Jhabvalas characters grapple with the universal quandaries of the human experiencejealousy, passion, temptation, and deceptiontruths of life and love that follow no matter where we wander. This collection features new short fiction from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Booker Prizewinning author of Heat and Dust and Academy Awardwinning screenwriter of Howards End and A Room With a View . Written over the past twenty years, these engrossing stories are domestic tapestries, threaded with the emotional lives and complex psychologies of intense lovers, quarreling married couples, weary elders, and their restless adult children. Whether languishing inside their shuttered New Delhi homes or hosting dinner parties in the overfurnished apartments of their Manhattan high-rises, Jhabvalas characters grapple with the universal quandaries of the human experience--jealousy, passion, temptation, deception--and truths of life and love that follow no matter where we wander. Written over twenty years and featuring settings that range from the crowded bazaars of India to New Yorks Upper East Side, this magnificent collection brings together fourteen new stories by a writer of unparalleled grace, insight, and emotional power. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, well-known for her Merchant-Ivory screenplays and her Booker Prize-winning novel Heat and Dust, claims unique territory in her short fiction, occupying the cusp between two worlds, India and the West. She expertly mingles the two in subject matter, perspective, and style to offer stories of universal appeal.Whether languishing inside their shuttered New Delhi homes or hosting dinner parties in their baroque Manhattan apartments, Jhabvalas characters are men and women of sensual passions and worldly ambition. They confront loneliness and neglect, struggle for independence in a world of manners and manipulations, and adjust to both welcome and unwelcome guests who stay too long and change their hosts lives in devastating ways. Hers are stories of elegance and exquisite delicacy, weaving complex domestic tapestries that range over entire lives. A proper Indian gentleman tries to help his wayward younger brother. A grand hostess on the eve of Indias independence uses her power for personal and political ends. A frail New York socialite tries to understand her daughters alternative life. And a circle of emotionally empty, upperclass New Yorkers adopts an old Indian woman as their spiritual guide.To read these stories is to succumb to the power of a true master--a writer who spans two worlds and who uses this singular perspective to illuminate hidden truths. The sensuousness of India, the neuroses of New York--both are portrayed vividly in these powerful narratives and marvelous entertainments.

Chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of 1986, this volume of stories, selected by the author from her own early work, represents the essence of her Indian experience. Bearing Jhabvala's hallmark of balance, subtlety, wry humor, and beauty, these stories present characters that prove to be as vulnerable to the contradictions and oppressions of the human heart as to those of India itself.

In Travelers , Jhabvala examines the unlikely convergence of four wanderers: Asha, an imperious Indian widow, Raymond, a curious Englishman, Lee, an American looking for her spiritual core, and Gopi, an impressionable young student. With a mixture of impassioned dialogue and subtle narrative, Jhabvala examines the psychological and cultural forces that wend their paths into inextricable knots of love and conflict.

The observant and insightful novel reveals, in rich and poignant detail, the interior lives of three generations of people in their quest for love and beauty.. This observant and insightful novel explores the interior lives of three generations of people on a quest for love and beauty.Louise, not content with her husbands gentle affection, strives to reclaim her youth in titillating spiritual and social adventures. Her daughter Marietta searches for beauty in lofty ideas and in her obsession for her son, Mark, who believes love is to be found in the pursuit of money and young, vacuous lovers. And Leo, their eccentric, self-styled guru, satisfies himself with power--commanding the bodies and souls of his followers.Demonstrating Jhabvalas deft twists of irony and humor, In Search of Love and Beauty brings several lifespans, full of hopes and ideals, within our grasp.

'A magnificent selection of the Booker winner's short stories' Sunday Times With an introduction by Anita Desai. Over the course of her glittering literary career, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala wrote some of the most wonderful novels of the twentieth century and screenplays to some of the most beloved films - but she was also a master of the short story form. This stunning new collection brings together the jewels in the crown of her writing: it is a showcase of astonishing storytelling power.

"All the figures in this book...are irresistible comic manifestations."—The New Yorker

This witty and perceptive novel is about Prem, a young teacher in New Delhi who has just become a householder and is finding his responsibilities perplexing.