Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, CBEwas 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 the late producer Ismail Merchant...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 May 1927
CountryGermany
blown country ground till writer
I stand before you as a writer without any ground of being out of which to write: really blown about from country to country, culture to culture till I feel - till I am - nothing. As it happens, I like it that way.
basis directly england experience gave language
England gave me a language and literature, the basis of what I am as a writer, but when I started writing more directly about my own experience, it wasn't England so much as what went before.
brilliant india noticed parrots remarkable tremendous
India was a sensation. It was remarkable to see all those parrots flying about, the brilliant foliage and the brilliant sky. It was a tremendous pageant. I never noticed the poverty.
One doesn't choose to become a writer. One is just born that way.
book character writing
All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were English; now I write as if I were American. You take other peoples backgrounds and characters; Keats called it negative capability.
writing preparation trying
I am dissatisfied with everything I have ever written and regard it all only as a preparation for that one work which probably I don't have it in me to write but which I hope I can go on trying for.
people india exception
India always changes people, and I have been no exception
book quitting
Westernized Indians don't like my books and I tend not to like westernized Indians - so we're quits.
baby book grateful
Film is not like a book; it's not a writer's baby at all. So many people have put in their talent, by that time that you feel grateful for what they've done, you don't feel possessive about it in any way.
book garden thinking
The older books were quite light-hearted. But I think most of my novels do end on a deep note of pessimism. Shadows seem to be closing in. The final conclusion isn't that life is wonderful and everything is bright and cheery and in the garden.
luck pieces born
The misfortune to be born when I was, where I was. That was a piece of bad luck.