'Heat and Dust' by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Published by John Murray
ISBN: 978-0719561771

WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THIS BOOK?
This was a book I picked up in one of those bookshops that have ends of line books. I was attracted to it firstly by the author's name which sounded Indian and I love books set in India and also by the beautiful picture on the front cover. I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover but there must be a reason why the publishers spend so long selecting the right images and in this case it worked for me. The picture shows an old style Indian exotic building with a street scene in front of it that couldn't be anywhere else except India. Anyway shallow I may be but I picked it up and bought it for £2.99

THE AUTHOR:
The author was actually born in Germany and her parents were Polish and after the age of twelve she was brought up in England. So bang goes my theory about her name being Indian! However she married an Indian architect and she lived in Delhi from 1951 to 1975. After 1975 they lived part of the time in delhi and part in England.

Ms Jhabvala has written film and TV scripts for 'A Room with a View' and 'Howard's End' which both won Academy awards. She won a Booker prize for this novel.

ABOT THE BOOK:
A young, beautiful, newly married Olivia is married to a fairly medium level civil servant and living in Satipur in the 1920s. She is bored as the only company she has are rather pompous and older wives until she meets a dashing Indian Prince.

The novel flits backwards and forwards between Olivia's story back in the early 20th century and that of her step- granddaughter who has gone to Satipur fifty years later to find out the truth about the rumours of Olivia's running off with the Nawab all those years before.

This is a love story with complications set in two different time periods but in the same town in India. The changes are not openly stated but we see how things have altered but not necessarily progressed. The 1920's is pre Independence and the civil servants and their families are on the edge of the unrest. The British are so terribly superior and even the Nawab or prince is considered less than the fairly lowly civil servants who are British.

Douglas had been talking to a group of 'Indians' in Hindustani and he comes back inside to Olivia who is "sitting at her sampler" (how very Jane Austen). He is smiling as he has enjoyed the banter but it's his superior attitude that says it all, "They think they are frightfully cunning but they're like children." This is just one of many such conversations that are examples of how the British saw their work in India at this time.
They change for dinner into their inappropriate suits etc and the men have cigars and drinks after the meal while the 'little ladies' are sent off to powder their noses. All so pretentious and boring I am not surprised Olivia got fed up and depressed. I would have crawled up the wall and round the bend, no wonder she found the Nawab and his English companion Harry so much more entertaining.

We are given little peaks into the world of the Nawab who has a very domineering mother who rules the other ladies in the palace and has considerable influence over her son too. It is a real insight into life of both the State rulers in India and their life style at the same time we also see how minor district officials in colonial India lived.

The other story is of the step granddaughter who is the daughter of Olivier's ex husband, Douglas who she left to run off with the Nawab. You can just imagine the scandal this must have caused in the stuffy colonial society of India at the time of the Raj and pre -independence. After Olivier ran off, Douglas was so humiliated that he returned to England where he married again. The step granddaughter was so intrigued by the story that she returns to India in the 1970s when India had become the place to go and 'find' yourself for young people.

Interestingly although the stories are set fifty years apart they are very similar in that they both have an Anglo India relationship with a similar result though what happens to each of the women is quite different because of the different times.

I particularly like the way that India was not cleaned up, streets were described with all the activity and grime that life on an Indian street has. The people that the granddaughter/narrator meets are very real and the descriptions of the places evoke pictures of places in India I have seen.

"I lay looking up at the roof which was a sheet of tin, and at the mud walls blackened from her cooking fire. Now with the only aperture closed, it was quite dark inside and all sorts of smells were sealed in - of dampness, the cowdung used as fuel, and the lentils she had cooked; also of the Maji herself. Her only change of clothes hung on the wall, unwashed."

Descriptions like this drop me straight in the hut; you can almost smell the atmosphere.

I found all the characters to be very believable, even the minor character such as Chid who is a young English boy discovering himself in India in the 70's. He decides to become a sadhu, and then becomes really ill. He then moves in with the narrator and ... "is always hungry, and not only for food. He also needs sex very badly and seems to take it for granted that I will give it to him the same way as I give him food."

I found the book really fascinating and loved both stories. The chapters alternated between the two stories and the parallels between the two became more evident as the novel progressed. I loved the way the two stories wove together and yet the descriptions and style of conversation are so different in the two stories.

As I was reading the book I had vague recollections of a film or TV production I had seen years ago. The book was first published in 1975 but looking up on the internet I find that there was a film made by Merchant Ivory in 1983. Apparently Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has worked with Merchant Ivory on a number of films, this being one. Having read the book I think I will now seek out the film and see how it compares. I did really enjoy 'A Room with a View' and 'Howard's End' so I am hopeful that this one will be good too. Ms Jhabvala won both the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for Best Screenplay and also the London Critics Circle Film Awards for Screenwriter of the Year of both for the screen play of " Heat and Dust" in 1984 so it sounds very promising.

WHAT OTHER MORE LITERARY PEOPLE HAVE SAID

"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" from The Times

"A writer of genius ... a writer of world class - a master storyteller" from the Sunday Times

"Coolly assured novel ... Written with seek elegance, this book delves into the heart of an unmistakably seductive country" from The Good Book Guide

"Her tussle with India is one of the richest treats of contemporary literature" from the Guardian
"Coolly assured novel ... Written with seek elegance, this book delves into the heart of an unmistakably seductive country" from The Good Book Guide

IN SHORT:
This is a brilliant novel that fills the senses in more ways than one. As I read I was drawn into the two stories which are a mixture of mystery and an old fashioned love story set in the fascinating backdrop of India during pre colonial times and in the 1970s. I enjoyed the descriptions in the more modern story as there was an element of humour in the character of Chid and indeed the narrator's observations of other people she came across in her daily life. This is never done in a malicious way nor is it condescending as she is merely observing but in a caring way. She is almost laughing at herself and the situation she finds herself in. At other times scenes are quite shocking such as when she finds a beggar woman dying and no one seems to care so she cares for this dying, smelly beggar from the street herself.

This novel has all I want from a novel. It has interesting characters and although not a lot actually happens the descriptions are so vivid that you feel you are there. I do hope when I finally get to see the film that it captures all I got from the book.

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©Catsholiday