Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Writing

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Born 1927-05-07 · Cologne, Weimar Republic [now Germany]

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, CBE (7 May 1927 – 3 April 2013) was a German-born British and American Booker prize-winning novelist, short story writer and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter. She is perhaps best known for her long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant. After meeting Cyrus Jhabvala in England, she married him and moved to India in 1951; Jhabvala was an Indian-Parsi architect. The couple lived in New Delhi and had three daughters. Jhabvala began then to elaborate her experiences in India and wrote novels and tales on Indian subjects. She wrote a dozen novels, 23 screenplays, and eight collections of short stories and was made a CBE in 1998 and granted a joint fellowship by BAFTA in 2002 with Ivory and Merchant.She is the only person to have won both a Booker Prize and an Oscar.

Acting credits

Behind the camera

The Remains of the Day poster
7.4

A rule-bound head butler's world of manners and decorum in the household he maintains is tested by the arrival of a housekeeper who falls in love with him in post-WWI Britain. The possibility of romance and his master's cultivation of ties with the Nazi cause challenge his carefully maintained veneer of servitude.

The Remains of the Day

1993

A Room with a View poster
7.0

When Lucy Honeychurch and chaperon Charlotte Bartlett find themselves in Florence with rooms without views, fellow guests Mr Emerson and son George step in to remedy the situation. Meeting the Emersons could change Lucy's life forever but, once back in England, how will her experiences in Tuscany affect her marriage plans?

A Room with a View

1986

Howards End poster
7.0

A saga of class relations and changing times in an Edwardian England on the brink of modernity, the film centers on liberal Margaret Schlegel, who, along with her sister Helen, becomes involved with two couples: wealthy, conservative industrialist Henry Wilcox and his wife Ruth, and the downwardly mobile working-class Leonard Bast and his mistress Jackie.

Howards End

1992

Le Divorce poster
5.0

While visiting her sister in Paris, a young woman finds romance and learns her brother-in-law is a philanderer.

Le Divorce

2003

Mr. & Mrs. Bridge poster
6.1

Set during World War II, an upper-class family begins to fall apart due to the conservative nature of the patriarch and the progressive values of his children.

Mr. & Mrs. Bridge

1990

Surviving Picasso poster
5.8

The passionate Merchant-Ivory drama tells the story of Francoise Gilot, the only lover of Pablo Picasso who was strong enough to withstand his ferocious cruelty and move on with her life.

Surviving Picasso

1996

The Golden Bowl poster
6.0

Wealthy American widower Adam Verver and his daughter Maggie live a refined life in Europe, surrounded by art. Maggie marries impoverished Italian Prince Amerigo, while Adam marries Maggie's friend Charlotte Stant. The Prince and Charlotte are having an affair, which Maggie discovers and navigates through a silent, psychological battle of wills, ultimately using her cunning to preserve her marriage and protect her father.

The Golden Bowl

2000

The Bostonians poster
5.5

A bored lawyer and a suffragette vie for the attention of a faith healer's charismatic daughter.

The Bostonians

1984

The City of Your Final Destination poster
5.7

28-year-old Kansas University doctoral student Omar Razaghi wins a grant to write a biography of Latin American writer Jules Gund. Omar must get through to three people who were close to Gund – his brother, widow, and younger mistress – so he can get authorization to write the biography.

The City of Your Final Destination

2009

Quartet poster
5.8

When her husband's arrest leaves her penniless, a woman accepts an invitation to move in with a strange couple.

Quartet

1981

Roseland poster
5.1

"Roseland" is made up of three stories, sometimes connecting, all set in the famed New York City dance palace, and all having the same theme: finding the right dance partner.

Roseland

1977

Madame Sousatzka poster
6.9

In London, eccentric piano instructor Madame Sousatzka takes on a new prize protégé, Manek, a teenage Bengali immigrant who displays incredible talent. Manek forms a close bond with his teacher, but soon discovers that she expects her pupils to become disciplined in all areas of life, and not just behind the piano. As he struggles to meet the challenges, Manek must also deal with his mother, who vies with his teacher for his attention.

Madame Sousatzka

1988

Heat and Dust poster
6.0

Anne is investigating the life of her grand-aunt Olivia, whose destiny has always been shrouded with scandal. As Anne delves into the history of her grand-aunt, she is led to reconsider her own life.

Heat and Dust

1983

Jefferson in Paris poster
5.1

His wife having recently died, Thomas Jefferson accepts the post of United States ambassador to pre-revolutionary France, though he finds it difficult to adjust to life in a country where the aristocracy subjugates an increasingly restless peasantry. In Paris, he becomes smitten with cultured artist Maria Cosway, but, when his daughter visits from Virginia accompanied by her attractive slave, Sally Hemings, Jefferson's attentions are diverted.

Jefferson in Paris

1995

Autobiography of a Princess poster
5.5

On the birthday of her late father, a deposed Maharaja, a displaced Indian princess living in London and his former private secretary watch home movies and reminisce about royal India.

Autobiography of a Princess

1975

Shakespeare-Wallah poster
6.5

The story of a family troupe of English actors who travel around the towns and villages in India giving performances of Shakespearean plays. Through their travels we see the changing face of India as the old is replaced by the new, Maharajas become hotel owners, sports become more important than culture and the theater is replaced by Bollywood movies. Based on the travels of Geoffrey Kendal with his daughter Felicity Kendal.

Shakespeare-Wallah

1965

Shakespeare-Wallah poster
6.5

The story of a family troupe of English actors who travel around the towns and villages in India giving performances of Shakespearean plays. Through their travels we see the changing face of India as the old is replaced by the new, Maharajas become hotel owners, sports become more important than culture and the theater is replaced by Bollywood movies. Based on the travels of Geoffrey Kendal with his daughter Felicity Kendal.

Shakespeare-Wallah

1965

A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries poster
6.1

This fictionalized story, based on the family life of writer James Jones, is an emotional slice-of-life story. Jones is portrayed here as Bill Willis, a former war hero turned author who combats alcoholism and is starting to experience health problems. Living in France with his wife, daughter, and an adopted son, the family travels an unconventional road which casts them as outsiders to others. Preaching a sexual freedom, his daughter's sexual discovery begins at an early age and betrays her when the family moves to Hanover in America. Her overt sexuality clashes with the values of her teenage American peers and gives her a problematic reputation. Meanwhile, her brooding brother copes with his own interior pain regarding his past, only comfortable communicating within the domestic space.

A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries

1998

Bombay Talkie poster
5.6

An English novelist travels to Bombay to watch one of her novels translated to film. She chases after the movie's leading man while the screenwriter chases after her.

Bombay Talkie

1970

The Guru poster
6.0

Britain's top pop artiste, Tom Pickle, travels to Bombay, India, circa 1960s to learn to play the sitar from renowned maestro Ustad Zafar Khan.

The Guru

1969

The Europeans poster
5.6

An adaptation of Henry James' novel about the Countess Eugenia Münster and her brother Robert, expatriate Americans who have grown up in Europe. Returning to prosperous relatives in New England, Eugenia hopes to make an advantageous marriage with a wealthy cousin. While Eugenia encounters obstacles, Robert finds his suit bearing fruit.

The Europeans

1979

Jane Austen in Manhattan poster
5.9

Two teachers vie for the right to stage a play written by Jane Austen when she was twelve years old.

Jane Austen in Manhattan

1980

The Householder poster
6.2

Prem, a young school teacher, is arranged married and begins the journey of learning the roles and responsibilities required of him.

The Householder

1963

The Courtesans of Bombay poster
5.5

In the Mumbai, India, tenement community of Pavanpul, young female courtesans sing, dance and perform sexual favors for male clientele. Directors James Ivory and Ismail Merchant blend documentary footage and dramatic reenactments in their exploration of this seamy underworld, the flip side of the Bollywood film industry, where aspiring actors and dancers -- some even sold into prostitution by their own families -- end up, with their innocence lost and their hopes for movie stardom shattered.

The Courtesans of Bombay

1983