Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

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Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (born May 7, 1927 in Cologne , † April 3, 2013 in New York City ) was a British writer and screenwriter (two Oscars). She worked closely with the director / producer duo Ismail Merchant and James Ivory for more than four decades .

Life

She was born as Ruth Prawer into a Polish-German Jewish family. Her mother's maiden name was Eleanora Cohn, her father the lawyer Marcus Prawer. Her parents emigrated in 1939 with her and her older brother Siegbert Salomon Prawer (1925–2012) from the National Socialist German Reich to England . In 1948 she became a British citizen. Her father committed suicide the same year he found out 40 family members had died in the Holocaust ; Ruth never came to Germany again.

She studied English literature at the University of London and in 1951 married Cyrus SH Jhabvala, an Indian architect and parser . The couple moved to New Delhi and raised a family; they had three daughters. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala began to process her new experiences in India literarily and wrote novels and short stories.

In 1955 her first book To Whom She Will (Amrita and Hari, 1956) was published, a story about the young Indian Amrita, who inappropriately wants to marry the lowly caste Hari - her, as she believes, great love - which ultimately comes from being trapped in her respective social conventions fails. In short succession, Prawer Jhabvala publishes further stories which, with an unembellished insight into the conditions of Indian society and with a slightly ironic undertone, bring what is foreign to Europeans to life. She is critical, but does not denounce Indian. She has published 31 of her short stories in the New Yorker since 1957 .

Merchant Ivory Productions approached her in 1963 with a request to write a script for her 1960 novel The Householder . This marked the beginning of a partnership lasting more than 20 films with international success, especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It emerged A Room with a View (1986, Room with a View ), Howards End (1992, Howards End ) and The Remains of the Day (1993, The Remains of the Day ). Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was awarded an Oscar for the scripts of the first two films ; Both films were based on the novel by EM Forster .

In 1975, she received the prestigious British Booker Prize for her novel Heat and Dust ( heat and dust , dt. 1985), the 1982 by James Ivory was filmed. It is about the colonial history of British India .

In 1984 she was a MacArthur Fellow .

On April 3, 2013, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala died of lung disease at her home at the age of 85.

Books in German translation

  • 1956: Amrita and Hari . (To Whom She Will) E. Günther Verlag, Stuttgart,
  • 1985: heat and dust. (Original title: Heat and Dust , translated by Utta Roy-Seifert ), Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, last 2nd edition, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-608-95265-9 .
  • 1989: A widow with money - 11 stories (original title: Out of India , translated by Utta Roy-Seifert), Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, ISBN 3-608-95565-8 .

Films (selection)

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matt Schudel: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, novelist and screenwriter, dies at 85. In: The Washington Post , April 3, 2013 (English).
  2. ^ Anita Gates: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Screenwriter, Dies at 85. In: The New York Times , April 3, 2013 (English).
  3. ↑ Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. In: The Telegraph , April 3, 2013 (English).
  4. ^ Joshua Rothman: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's stories. In: The New Yorker , April 3, 2013 (English).
  5. ↑ Oscar-winning screenwriter: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is dead. In: hpi / dpa. Spiegel Online , April 4, 2013, accessed April 11, 2013 .
  6. ↑ Janet Watts: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala obituary. In: The Guardian , April 3, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Prawer Jhabvala, Ruth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH April 3, 2013
Place of death New York City