Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, revered author of books and screenplays (including screenplays for works by Kazuo Ishiguro, Henry James, and E.M. Forster), died on April 3, 2013. She was 85 years old. She is the only person to win both a Booker Prize and Oscar. Her career achievements spanned a broad spectrum but always incorporated a satirical understanding of foreign cultures from the exile’s point of view. Born in Cologne, Germany on May 7, 1927, she and her family were among the last Jews to leave Nazi Germany safely. They moved to England in 1939.  Her father subsequently took his own life in 1948 after learning approximately forty members of his family perished in the Holocaust.

Despite the harrowing events of her early life, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala chose not to write about her childhood though the somber, clandestine early lives of many of her characters seem to mirror her own experience. She wrote twelve novels and five collections of short stories.  Her novel “Heat and Dust” won the booker prize in 1975. Her partnership with Merchant-Ivory (a prominent film production company that often focused on translating literary works to the silver screen), beginning thirty years ago, served as a defining moment in her writing career. “Howards End”, “Room with a View”, and “Remains of the Day” were among the twenty screenplays she wrote. “A Room with a View” won the Oscar for Best Screenplay in 1986 and “Howard’s End” won the Oscar in 1992. Her final collaboration with Merchant- Ivory was the screenplay adaptation of Henry James novel “The Golden Bowl” in 2001.  The last screenplays she wrote were “Le Divorce” in 2001 and “The City of Your Final Destination” in 2008.

Source: The Telegraph

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