Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Oscar Winner, Dies at 85
Indian Themes: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, author and screenwriter, has died at 85.
Award-winning novelist and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, author of “Heat and Dust” and many other books set in India, died on Wednesday at the age of 85, her Los Angeles agent said.
Jhabvala died at her home in New York City, a spokesman for Hollywood agency Paradigm told Reuters. The spokesman did not give the cause of her death but said she had been sick for some time.
Jhabvala also worked on several movie adaptations with filmmakers James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, winning two Academy Awards for her screenplays for 1985 movie “A Room With a View” and “Howards End” in 1992.
Jhabvala was born in Germany but emigrated with her family to Britain during the Nazi regime. She later married an Indian architect and moved to India, where she began to write about her life there.
Her novel “Heat and Dust,” a romance about a young woman living in India in the 1920s, won Britain’s coveted Booker Prize in 1975, and was adapted for the big screen in 1983.
Jhabvala collaborated with Merchant and Ivory on more than 20 movies including “The Remains of the Day” and “Mr. And Mrs. Bridge.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
