It was all right. The aspects of heat and dust and poverty and dirt are so familiar from my time in Egypt. The racist and stereotypical views of the British towards the Indians are still held by many Western expats who see themselves as superior to the people whose countries they live in for short or long periods. The fascination with a place so unlike home is understandable.

I was keen on both the narrator’s self discovery gained through her researching the time spent in 1923 India of British ex-Pat Olivia Rivers as well as the novel’s exploration of Anglo-Indian dynamics before and after Indian independence. Unfortunately I found the characters so wildly unappealing that it was difficult to spend time with them. This indifference at best, scorn at worst, made being emotionally invested in the cross-cultural love story or sympathizing over societal and cultural constraints hurdles just too big for me to get past.

One of the great Booker prize winners - a novel which I read nearly forty years ago and has been on my list of books to reread for at least the last thirty. A short novel but it has so much to say, and says it so well and so succinctly about everything from class, race, gender, relations between and about all the previous and as well the conflicts arising from encounters between people from different races, cultures, backgrounds and the exploration of those interactions.

It is a truly great novel and should be in print and she should be read because she could write rings around almost any author writing in English today. She is unique, my attempt to shelve her only displays the limits of my poor classifications and I would insist that anyone thinking of reading this or any of her novels first explore her biography.

Outside of the obvious 'classics' there aren't many fiction authors who I last read forty years ago that I would award five stars to - with Ms. Jhabvala to do otherwise would not only be an insult to her but reflect a shocking admission of my own inadequacies as a reader.

A beautiful, stunning, nuanced and glorious novel.

One of my favorite recent novelists, Jhabvala (who was also a noted screenwriter) manages to humbly enact a mostly non-colonialist relationship to India, which she models for her readers. Would that we in America today would be so humbled and kind in our relationship with others both within and without our country's borders! Jhabvala has an amazing sense of place and plot, moving effortlessly in and out of various women's (and men's) lives with sympathy and candour and understanding. This particular title won the Booker Prize, but all of her work carries this wonderful spirit.

RESEÑA EN INGLÉS PARA PROYECTO.

Heat and Dust it is set in India in different periods of time and it was written in 1975 by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.
The book tell us the story of two members of the same family who lived in India in different periods.

The first one is Olivia, the first wife of Douglas. She was unfaithful and this thing provoked a huge scandal in the British Community. Years later, Douglas finally married again with another woman, who was the mother of his only child and he is also the grandfather of the main character of this story.

She wants to know the truth behind Olivia's past and she decided to travel to the same place that Olivia lived.

The book is a diary of Douglas' grandaughter, who traveled to India to discover how she lived during the first ages at 1920 and why she did what she did. And the only clue about that was a letter write by her own hand.
Hence, with this these things in her hands, our character arrive to India in 70s. Since the first moment, she meet different people who will be very important in her life and at the same time, she tell us all about Olivia's past. Finally, she will find out that although their stories were pretty similar, both of them did the things in a different way. And that was because they weren't the same type of person despite the fact they were family.

I completely recommend this book if you want to read what the life was for a woman in a country as exotic as India during the 20th century. Moreover, if you enjoy reading stories through the eyes of one member of the family as it was a personal diary.

1975

"Heat and Dust" and Gossip From The Forest by Thomas Keneally were the only two books shortlisted in 1975 and there was some debate about whether the latter was really a novel at all (as there was with Schindler's Ark).

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala had been living in India for about twenty years when she wrote this book and she captures its mesmerising effect on outsiders and its heat and dust very well. The author makes an attempt to show how attitudes have changed between the two time periods, in the West and the East, and how India itself has changed in that time, for better and for worse. This works quite well and she shows a fine cultural sensitivity.

The book tells the story of two women who visit India fifty years apart and the effect it has on them. Very often, when a book uses two stories in different time frames, one story is much stronger than the other. This is not the case here, both stories have equal strength, but unfortunately I felt both were equally weak. Neither woman's actions are sufficiently explained to feel reasonable or consistent.

Why does Olivia decide to have an abortion? Presumably because it could be the Nawab's child, but then why have the abortion and then run away to him, when she could have done that with the baby?
Why does the Begum help her arrange it?
Does the Nawab know? What does he think about it? Would he have accepted her afterwards?
What does Douglas think about it?
Why does Olivia stop writing to her sister?
Why does the narrator have sex with Chid? She does not find him attractive or like him.
Why does she have sex with Inder Lal?
Why does she decide to have an abortion and why does she change her mind?

I enjoyed the book overall, but feel that there must have been some better candidates for the prize published that year and that Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was a much better screenwriter than she was a novelist.

Mi dispiace per gli alberi che sono stati usati per stampare questo scempio.

The story jumps between modern day and 1932 and describes the life of two women living in India: one as a wife of a British functionary in a remote province in India and one, a relative of the husband, who moves to India to find out more. A good read.

i enjoyed this more than i thought i would, quite honestly.

i think what made this for me were 1) the parallels between the timelines and the consequences that pulled, 2) the 1923 timeline and especially the character of the nawab who was as enigmatic as described and 3) the way what was "known" of the affair never lined up with what had actually happened. olivias elopement with the nawab wasnt scandalous as much as necessary; her love divided between two men rang bell-like across the story and gave the impression of unfulfilled longing.

i did find it odd though that the narrator never explained WHY she was so interested in retracing olivias steps and story.

discussion on the topic of prawer jhabvalas european descent and to what degree her work has to be labeled that of an outsider to indian culture can too be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kWNl...

i found this helpful in my interpretation of this work.

The opening of this book tells that Olivia finds her way to the Nawab (a minor Indian Prince), leaving her husband. I have had a string of reading lately where there is marital trouble and I wasn't exactly in the mood for another. But this felt entirely different. Olivia seems wholeheartedly in love with Douglas, her husband, and he with her. So what happened?

Olivia's story takes place in 1923 when the British ruled India. Her story is told by Olivia's step-granddaughter. There are two stories of two Indias because the granddaughter also has a story, alternating with Olivia's throughout. I liked them both. Part of what kept me reading was to find out why the granddaughter came to India.

The prose is good, though not beautiful - there is no sentence I wanted to read again because it was beautiful. I did read this one twice: He wanted to linger, but his syce stood holding his horse, his peon carried his files, his bearer stood waiting with his solar topee. The "he/his" was Douglas, Olivia's husband. It indicates the kind of lifestyle enjoyed by the British while they ruled. I think the characterizations of the two women could have been more fully-fleshed, though the women were real enough for the novel to be believable.

I'd like to stretch this to 5-stars, but it just doesn't quite make it. It's better than a middlin' 4-stars, though.

"You see," he tried to explain - busy as he is, he always welcomes English conversation - "this climate does not suit you people too well. And let alone you people, it does not suit even us." He explained to me that not only Westerners but even most Indians suffer from amoebic dysentery. They hardly know it, for they also suffer from many other diseases. He became eloquent as he enumerated all the diseases of India. It was indeed a terrible roll call, and by the time he came to the end of it (if there is an end), he said "I think perhaps God never meant that human beings should live in such a place." Here I contradicted him, and we had a discussion on this theme in English. He has already told me that, while at medical college, he was a member of the Debating Society and distinguished himself at several inter-University de-bates. He is indeed skilled at spicing truth with humour, ard this is how he concluded our discussion: "Let us admit for the sake of our argument that we Indians are fit to live here - where else are we fit for?" he asked, leaving a pause for me to laugh in. "But no one else," he said. "None of you. You know in the bad old days you had your Clubs and they were reserved for British only? Well now it is like this that we have our germs and we have reserved these for ourselves only. For Indians only! Keep out!" He threw himself back in his chair to laugh and was still laughing as he turned to jab a needle into an emaciated arm that was held out to him.
- Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
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How the hell this book managed to win the booker prize is beyond me, but again - i am not much of a booker prize book reader either. The story were narrated by Olivia’s step grand-daughter who travelled to India wanting to trace her past and real story. The narrator remained unnamed - but the POV shifted between Olivia and this narrator’s story (how she coped with India and all the cliche’ and stereotypes of India from the lenses of white people). The story itself was pretty straight forward - Olivia lived in India during 1920s with her husband, Douglas (If you have watched RRR, Just imagined Jenny character from the movie but more bratty) a spoiled, privileged english woman that was bored and in order to adapt to live among Indians and in a tiny town where her husband has been placed to do his job. She, then, met Nawab - a minor Indian Prince. She fell in love hard for him and decided to escape with him. Now , 50 years later , the narrator found herself in India simply because of the letters left behind by Olivia. Listen, i am not Indian but man, i counted 22 pages out of 181 pages that i folded because the phrases / description was offensive as fuck. To top it off, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a white woman that has lived in India and married an Indian man - its almost absurd how she got away with this colonial bullshit. Heat and Dust phrase was repeated more than few times in the book referring to the climate of India, the supposed hostile environment according to this Olivia and Nameless narrator (which i presumed is not suitable for colonizers ass) as Indians thrived as usual and in some part, it can referred to suffering and death in India. The characters in this novel - none of them redeemable. Nawab was a misogynist snobbish jerk - “I am liberated and educated because i am impregnated a white woman but i kept my sick wife and mothers confined in the space as they are indian women hence the culture must be preserved as it is” . This is what came to my mind to summarize who Nawab is. I did feel pity for Douglas but only because Olivia eloped with Nawab but his attitude towards Indian and India is just as awful as the rest of british colonial officers mentioned in the book. I am just glad i finished it and Good Lord, what a frustrating journey to read this book.

(spoilers) First, it was well written to the point where it felt like they were real people, not fictional. Second, why do so many writers tell you what should be the biggest event of the book on the first page? I would have liked to find out Olivia was going to run off with the Nawab as it unfolded. Tessie could have been going to India to find out what happened to her Grandfathers first wife without disclosing so much.

More thoughts... I would have liked to know a lot more about what Olivia was thinking. She described the Nawab as a force of nature and yet told her husband she loved him and was happy. One impersonal account of crying by a statue doesn't cut it. If she was writing this from Olivia's diary/letters then there should be more details. Was she torn between desire and love, or did she not have a problem with lying to her husband(morality anyone)? Did she regret her choice's or not? Or was she just unhappy that the doctor caught her? I realize she didn't have info after Olivia ran back to the Nawab, but before that surely she would have writen something down about her feelings. Her passing on of the information from Olivia's papers seemed oddly impersonal, like Olivia was emotionally disconnected from her own situation or is not a good narrator. That's why I didn't give this book a higher rating.