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Heat and Dust

3.57 of 5 stars 3.57 · rating details · 2,525 ratings · 132 reviews

Set in colonial India during the 1920s, Heat and Dust tells the story of Olivia, a beautiful woman suffocated by the propriety and social constraints of her position as the wife of an important English civil servant. Longing for passion and independence, Olivia is drawn into the spell of the Nawab, a minor Indian prince deeply involved in gang raids and criminal plots. She...more

Paperback, 190 pages

Published April 16th 1999 by Counterpoint (first published 1975)

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The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Booker Prize Winners

35th out of 48 books — 1,008 voters

Excellent Books about India and England

18th out of 129 books — 141 voters

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Mar 11, 2012 Courtney H. rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: bookers

This is definitely one of my least favorite Bookers. It was dull, it was pretentious, and the main character was, in the words of Rizzo, a total drag. Which might have been somewhat forgivable if it didn't have such a promising start. Because Jhabvala is clearly a good writer, and though the book is in journal form -- not usually my favorite -- it paces nicely and the writing has a nice kind of precision to it (though somewhat pretentious, as mentioned before). More importantly, she introduces a...more

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Nov 25, 2008 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008, in-by-of-england, reviewed

I have wanted to read this book since I realized that Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was the screenwriter of Merchant/Ivory's A Room with a View, which is the best adaptation I've ever seen. Any woman who can bring out all of the humor of the novel, show us the real emotions of the characters underneath, and include E.M. Forster's critical take on society, is worth my time, especially since it took about twenty years between making the connection and reading the book. (I didn't say she was worth my imme...more I have wanted to read this book since I realized that Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was the screenwriter of Merchant/Ivory's A Room with a View, which is the best adaptation I've ever seen. Any woman who can bring out all of the humor of the novel, show us the real emotions of the characters underneath, and include E.M. Forster's critical take on society, is worth my time, especially since it took about twenty years between making the connection and reading the book. (I didn't say she was worth my immediate attention).

Every review of this book on Goodreads mentions that this book won the Booker prize. About half of them can't figure out why. I'm not sure if that's part of the selection criteria for the prize or the judges (the many different ones over the years) enjoy tormenting readers with books that seem to confuse and bore the reading public. The only Margaret Atwood book I couldn't finish is the Booker winner.

But I liked Heat and Dust (for the most part). I would not say it is a book about India; please don't think that you're going to learn anything valuable about the culture or the people from this book. The book is about British women who go to India in search of something, and what they find, or do not find, there. It's much like A Passage to India in that way. I wouldn't suggest that Forster knew anything about Indians, but he certainly knew how to explain the good, the bad, and the ugly behavior of the British abroad. In Heat and Dust is the difference between a British gay man writing in 1910 and a German woman (married to an Indian) writing in 1975. It can be gritty, with the details of illness, death, and insanity described. The author splits the narrative in two: one, set in 1923, is the story of a newly married and newly arrived women living with her colonial-service husband and bored out of her mind. The other, set in 1975, is of the granddaughter, of the colonial-service husband, who is searching for the history of the first woman, following her trail to India and seeking experiences there.

There is a great deal of seeking in this book. Seeking amusement, seeking understanding, seeking comfort, and seeking medical services. It has an excellent assessment, with some sympathy, of the European pilgrims who came to India in the seventies seeking enlightenment and who spent their time complaining about the food, weather, and being cheated (either by each other or the locals). Forster would be proud, I think. One of the book's main strengths is that is deals with the ramifications of all this seeking. What happens after the woman is seduced? What happens after the doctor is called? What happens once you've found what you thought you wanted?

What I didn't like was the ending. It fit the story and what Jhabvala was trying to do but I've read other books that end similarly and they all drive me crazy. (If I list them here it will be a spoiler to those who have read them, sorry). It's not because the author isn't talented or that the story doesn't end well; it's because I would never make such a decision. I don't understand how a character I have invested so much time in could choose to behave in this fashion. It's kind of nice to have that type of reaction to the story though; it shows me I became invested. I cared. I was surprised, when I finished the book, at my reaction, honestly. I hadn't realized I liked the book until that moment. (less)

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May 20, 2013 Aban (Aby) rated it 3 of 5 stars

In this short novel the reader follows the stories of two English women: the narrator whose name is never revealed and Olivia, her step-grandmother. Set in 1923 during Colonial times and fifty years later in Independent India, the novel follows the narrator's attempt to trace Olivia's life: her dissatisfaction with being an administrator's wife and her attraction to an Indian ruler who offered her an escape from it. Both women become pregnant and, although the choices they make are different, th...more

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Apr 24, 2013 Neetineeti rated it 4 of 5 stars

It was very engaging to begin with. She set the scene beautifully and moved effortlessly between the story of the narrator and her step-grandmother. The description of a poor little town in colonial India and its evolution into a squalid modern day small town is also quite vivid, although a bit depressing. Some of the character descriptions are quite good, but some seem a bit stereotypical, like the British boy who has become a 'sadhu'. However, one has to be fair given that she is obviously wri...more

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Oct 14, 2012 Tori rated it 3 of 5 stars

It was a cool look into what India was like post-British colonialism. You got to see parallels in today's, or 1970's at least, Indian society too, the book kind of shows that India has taken old British Imperialism from their past and taken it over for their own particular ways of living.
The author seems to think Indian culture will *always* change a person entering it, whether for the person's better or worse, and demonstrates this in the exact same story through a woman and her great-great aun...more

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Sep 19, 2012 Juanita Rice rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Hmm: 3 stars, though that's too generous for my feeling about it after the fact. This is in some ways a pale rerun of A Passage to India. Although written by a woman who married a Parsi and lived for some time in India, Heat and Dust is an outsider's view of India and its people; the main characters, with whom the novel somewhat identifies, are a newly married British couple in the years of the Raj, i.e., British rule. We are privy to colonial administrators who believe one must hold a hard line...more Hmm: 3 stars, though that's too generous for my feeling about it after the fact. This is in some ways a pale rerun of A Passage to India. Although written by a woman who married a Parsi and lived for some time in India, Heat and Dust is an outsider's view of India and its people; the main characters, with whom the novel somewhat identifies, are a newly married British couple in the years of the Raj, i.e., British rule. We are privy to colonial administrators who believe one must hold a hard line against assimilation or liberalism. Indians, in their view, are corrupt, venal, self-serving dissimilators, childish game-players. The new bride, Olivia, is soon bored with the staid colonial culture, and is charmed by regal luxurious parties at the home of an Indian "prince," the Nawab. No other name is given to him. The reader is never privy to his thoughts or his point of view. In fact, he is drawn as a quite repellent character: immorally seducing Olivia, having been irresponsible to a wife, dominated by his mother, and having no sincere intellectual interests, no discernible principles. He manipulates his hangers-on; he dominates Olivia--but whether that is because he is domineering, or because she wills herself to be dominated, I'm not sure.

At any rate, Olivia leaves her young British husband abruptly and disappears with the Nawab. They never see her again. The Nawab falls on hard financial times, and some political squeezing, but he manages to maintain mother, wife and Olivia in separate adequate quarters. Even after he dies, Olivia has no communication with anyone from the British side of the story. Olivia's husband remarries (does he get an annulment, or did I miss the absentee divorce) and becomes the narrator's grandfather. So we never even really are privy to Olivia's thinking. She is one of those naive unfortunate Europeans who "goes native" in the colonies: think Heart of Darkness, perhaps, but without the depth and sober reflection of Conrad.

I read that there has been some criticism from India that the point of view of the novel is still Colonialist, and I agree. Written in 1975, Heat and Dust won the Booker Prize; Edward Said's classic postcolonial text Orientalism was published in 1977 and, I think, postcolonialism in general was not widely understood or accepted for another fifteen years or so. I'm not going to take on a deconstruction of the text; although it is tempting, but although it was a compelling read, it was also a somewhat repulsive one in a certain shallow detachment with which I am familiar. In 1969-1970, I was in Morocco for six months; it took two or three years and a little maturity before I understood that anything I had to say about the people of Morocco was completely saturated with Eurocentric prejudice. All I had seen about them was their "difference" from us. Since I could not communicate in their languages (Arabic, Berber) and not even thoroughly in French, and since I was a visiting tourist/parasite in their lives and not a co-worker, not a family member, not an intimate, my point of view made of them "the thrilling sights" for my adventure. Exotic experiences; strange people; odd customs. So I know the temptation—to look at people as cultural artefacts, as obstacles, as impenetrably confusing and undependable. I detect the same ambivalence in this novel. I think Forster's was more honest. At least he didn't make Adela Quested such a simpering fool as Olivia.

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Jun 27, 2012 Helen Kitson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

"All the graves are in very bad condition - weed-choked, and stripped of whatever marble and railings could be removed. It is strange how, once graves are broken and overgrown in this way, then the people in them are truly dead. The Indian Christian graves at the front of the cemetery, which are still kept up by relatives, seem by contrast strangely alive, contemporary." (from Heat and Dust, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala)

A slim novel, first published in 1975, which slips between the lives of Olivia, who...more "All the graves are in very bad condition - weed-choked, and stripped of whatever marble and railings could be removed. It is strange how, once graves are broken and overgrown in this way, then the people in them are truly dead. The Indian Christian graves at the front of the cemetery, which are still kept up by relatives, seem by contrast strangely alive, contemporary." (from Heat and Dust, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala)

A slim novel, first published in 1975, which slips between the lives of Olivia, who caused a scandal in 1920s India when she left her husband for an Indian prince, and her step-granddaughter who comes to India in 1973 with Olivia's letters, intrigued by the woman she never met.

It is (one supposes deliberately) unclear whether sections from Olivia's point of view are really her actions and thoughts, or if they're filtered through the unnamed step-granddaughter, who keeps a journal of her time in India.

What is odd is that Olivia seems to be genuinely in love with her husband, yet she apparently has sex with the prince and, unsure who the father of her baby is, allows the prince's mother to arrange an abortion for her, which Olivia goes along with almost like a sleepwalker, as though she's lost her will. Perhaps Major Minnies is right when he says that 'loving India' is 'dangerous for the European.' His reported remark that India 'finds out the weak spot and presses on it' also ties in with the midwives, who begin the abortion process by pressing on the woman's womb.

After the abortion we hear that Olivia goes to live with the prince, but she effectively falls silent from that point on. We have no idea what her life with the prince is like, whether or not she's happy with him. Even the town in which she lived is referred to as X. It as though her identity, perhaps even her existence, ceases once she's left her conventional life and broken the rules of her class, sex and time.

Fifty years later, the step-granddaughter has no husband, and is in many ways free from the conventions that bound Olivia's life. The girl, too, becomes pregnant. Olivia wasn't sure whether the father of her aborted child was her husband or her lover, but the girl knows that she's carrying the child of the Indian in whose house she rents a room. She tentatively seeks out an abortion, but as the midwife/abortionist presses on her womb, she cries out for the woman to stop. It is the moment at which she realises that she wants this pregnancy.

Jhabvala explores the complicated love-hate relationship between Britain and India. Even the Brits who love the place are ambivalent about it: 'But [India] always remained for him an opponent, even sometimes an enemy, to be guarded and if necessary fought against from without and, especially, from within: from within one's own being.' Olivia, perhaps, never realised this, and let India suck her in, devour her. The implication is that India is fatal for Brits who aren't constantly on their guard: "there are British cemeteries everywhere! they have turned out to be the most lasting monument.'

When the book ends, we leave the nameless step-granddaughter alone in the town of X, pregnant. Like Olivia, she already feels a reluctance to leave the small mountain town. To me this feels slightly sinister, as though 'X' has claimed another victim, another human female sacrifice, and yet both Olivia and the girl make - or appear to make - their own choices. If they are victims, they are willing victims, like the voluntary suttee about whom Olivia had expressed her admiration. [July 2004](less)

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Jul 21, 2011 Elliot Ratzman rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club

A gentle colonial romance—not much big drama happens, except for two unexpected inter-ethnic pregnancies. The author, Ruth Prawer Jhavada, won the 1975 Booker Prize for this story of two independent women in India fifty years apart. In 1923, Olivia is a new bride to a colonial administrator in India. She flouts conventions by chumming up to the local potentate while her husband is out being a colonial administrator. The local royal has an in-house gay British friend, lots of Western cars, and lo...more

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May 02, 2010 piratemoon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: booker, fiction

Heat and Dust
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
John Murray

Winner, 1975

Again, this was a novel of colonialism. I'm sensing a theme, at least in these early Bookers. It tells the stories of two women, fifty years apart; Olivia and her step grandaughter, who remains anonymous throughout. Olivia was an English colonial wife in the 1920s, and caused a scandal by committing adultery with the local Nawab. Her step-grandaughter becomes increasingly fascinated by the letters which Olivia sent to her sister, and seeks...more Heat and Dust
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
John Murray

Winner, 1975

Again, this was a novel of colonialism. I'm sensing a theme, at least in these early Bookers. It tells the stories of two women, fifty years apart; Olivia and her step grandaughter, who remains anonymous throughout. Olivia was an English colonial wife in the 1920s, and caused a scandal by committing adultery with the local Nawab. Her step-grandaughter becomes increasingly fascinated by the letters which Olivia sent to her sister, and seeks out the family secret by returning to India.

However, she does not simply trace the events of Olivia's life. Her life in Satipur begins to echo them. She commits adultery with a local man who is also in a position of power, her landlord Inder Lal, by whom she becomes pregnant. She seeks, like Olivia, seclusion in the mountains. But the patterns do diverge (I shan't reveal how), which makes it seem almost as if she has been recalled to produce a happier ending than Olivia had, and restore the universe to some kind of balance.

The story shifts between a narration of 1923 and the first person content of the narrator's diaries, juxtaposing the two in a parallelism which slowly establishes itself over the course of the book. It is at once personal and abstract, the nameless narrator almost as distanced from the reader as the spoiled Olivia. Neither character, for all their activities, seem to develop throughout the course of the text. They become, thus, archetypal. Indeed, many of the characters likewise change little. The only one to go through a significant transformation is the somewhat incidental Chid. And the reasons for his transformation are never revealed, either to the narrator or the reader. The whole piece, for me, had a fable-like quality, a hazy sense of the heat and dust of the title. It is slight, delicate.

Delicate, in fact, almost to the point of being insubstantial. I do not know what the reader is supposed to learn, or feel, or gain from the text. Whilst it is certainly very prettily written, and was not difficult to read, I do not find within it anything which would suggest that it was a Booker Winner. A strange book.

A strange year, it seems. The longlist was not published, and only one other book, Thomas Keneally's Gossip From the Forest, appears on the shortlist. Weird. I can't explain that as yet...

Anyhows, I think that's my review for this. (less)

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Apr 03, 2011 Manda rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-prize-winner

I have seen the film of this book many years ago, and have to say that I prefer the book, as the film puzzled me.

The story is that a girl in "modern" times (it was written in 1975) who goes to India to find out more about Olivia, the woman that her grandfather was married to before she left him for an Indian prince. The modern girl, who I don't think is actually named, goes to great lengths to follow in Olivia's footsteps, even seducing an Indian in the same place where Olivia and her Indian Pr...more

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Jun 23, 2008 Gina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: awards-read, read-in-2008

1975 Booker

An excellent, quick read that jumps back and forth in time between 1923 and 1970s India, concentrating on the lives of the wife of a British official in 1923 and her husband's granddaughter in the 1970s.

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Jul 08, 2011 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

As a book of a certain type, it's mostly well-written, although w/ some important flaws. This is a 'Anglo-goes-to-developing-country-and-has-life-changing-experience' story. Which is better than a 'Anglo-leads-the-natives-in-revolt' story by a long shot. The first few pages of prologue were a bit confusing--too many names--and probably not necessary. Frankly, I didn't quite get the motivations of the two female protagonists. Maybe this was because I didn't quite engage with them, or the story, w...more

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Nov 12, 2012 Pete Young rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The 1975 Booker Prize winner that was also made into a Merchant Ivory film. I enjoyed this closely examined interaction of cultures and eras, in which a 1970s British woman goes to India in search of the truth about her 1920s step-grandmother, the naïve wife of a dull British diplomat, who forms a brief romance with a minor Indian prince. A small scandal and not especially dramatic, though what impresses are the well-drawn characters, the portrayal of the condescending paternalism of the British...more

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Jan 01, 2012 Sunny rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: indian-pakistani-literature

book set in india in the early 1900s about the relationship between an English lady (Olivia) and a rich Indian nawab told through a series of letters which the grand daughters (also Olivia) of one of the main characters comes upon. it is well written adn very enaging and invokes that feeling of south asia like arundathi roy does in the God of small things. subtle descriptions of the landscape render the whole landscape so crealy in your mind. the dustiness of the dustiness in the grapes of wrath...more

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Oct 23, 2007 Amanda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone who likes to read about India

Shelves: readandenjoyed

What a beautiful book! Quick read and quite enjoyable.

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Jun 22, 2011 Dennis rated it 2 of 5 stars

I had high expectations of this 1975 Booker Prize winner because: (1) it won the Booker Prize; (2) Jhabvala's collection of short stories Like Birds, Like Fishes was surprisingly impressive. In fact, I don't remember a short story collection that I enjoyed as much. But like all high expectations from my life, people and things let me down. I'm better off without expectations.

Heat and Dust is a fine work, to be sure, but the two parallel storylines of the present day narrator and the 1923 Olivia...more

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Apr 09, 2009 Erika S rated it 4 of 5 stars

A decent book. It actually brought me to tears in one particular instance:

"Maji sat down under a tree and took the old woman's head in her lap. She stroked it with her thick peasant hands and looked down into the dying face. Suddenly the old woman smiled, her toothless mouth opened with the same recognition as a baby's. Were her eyes not yet sightless--could she see Maji looking down at her? Or did she only feel her love and tenderness? Whatever it was, that smile seemed like a miracle to me" (1...more

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Jun 13, 2013 Cathy Rodgers rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, bright-young-things-1900-1945, historical-fiction

I liked the way the author showed how different Olivia's life/choices were from those of the narrator.

But I never saw the reason for their attraction to the two Indian men that the women have relationships with. Neither Indian male character appealed to me.

I think this book is "driven" by the characterization of the place - India, much more than a story driven by the characterization of the people in the book. I'm left with the sense that all of the characters were a bit vague. Since I prefer c...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Alexis rated it 3 of 5 stars

Mixed feelings about this Booker. I had it in a stack of books to throw away since it was on my shelf unread for years. But started it this week and finished quickly. I do love India and reading about it, and I am interested in the colonial patriarchy depicted, and the two outsider women who sort of seem to cross the lines. But who's zooming who? And why is the narrator so interested in following the life of a woman who divorced her grandfather? The icebergs were large, but it got me thinking. I...more

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Oct 01, 2008 NRoe rated it 5 of 5 stars

Short but so well done.

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Sep 03, 2010 Faith Justice rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: given-away

A quick read, romantic, literary and lyrical. The book is structured around two narratives: Olivia, a bored English colonial wife in India in 1920 who scandalizes the British community by falling in love with a local Indian prince; and her step-granddaughter who fifty years later goes to India to find the woman behind the letters she has in her possession. The book is very internal, but Jhabvala does a marvelous job of describing the British colonial life and modern India with all its beauty and...more

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Dec 16, 2012 Gaile rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-century, india, emery-s-2012-challenge-gaile-kenne, exotic-locales

There was plenty of heat and dust in this novel all right although it was so short it was more like a novella. This was a rapid read and the descriptions of the country of India and those who peopled it in the 1920's and 1970's was well done. What I thought lacking in this novel was emotion. The characters never came quite alive to me as I could never get into their heads. The main story is about Olivia, an English woman who leaves her husband for a Prince Of India. However they do not stay toge...more

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Sep 28, 2011 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: booker, britain

It took less than a day to read this - 180 pages long and easy to read - but it's a rich and fruitful book. It comprises two stories in parallel: the tale of Olivia who abandons her British husband when she goes to India; and of her un-named relative who goes to Satipur some fifty years later to solve the mystery of what became of Olivia. She ends up becoming 'seduced' by India too.

Olivia is naive but adventurous, and she doesn't like the other British wives and their disdain for Indian religion...more

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Dec 08, 2010 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: booker-prize-finalist, 2010

(spoilers) First, it was well written to the point where it felt like they were real people, not fictional. Second, why do so many writers tell you what should be the biggest event of the book on the first page? I would have liked to find out Olivia was going to run off with the Nawab as it unfolded. Tessie could have been going to India to find out what happened to her Grandfathers first wife without disclosing so much.

More thoughts... I would have liked to know a lot more about what Olivia wa...more

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Jun 10, 2012 Katy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: booker-prize-winners

Getting to this Booker Prize Winner a little late for May. So far I enjoy it; kind of funny to superimpose the seriousness of this book with the satire of The Siege of Krishnapur, they are interesting compliments so far...

"Set in colonial India during the 1920s, Heat and Dust tells the story of Olivia, a beautiful woman suffocated by the propriety and social constraints of her position as the wife of an important English civil servant. Longing for passion and independence, Olivia is drawn into t...more Getting to this Booker Prize Winner a little late for May. So far I enjoy it; kind of funny to superimpose the seriousness of this book with the satire of The Siege of Krishnapur, they are interesting compliments so far...

"Set in colonial India during the 1920s, Heat and Dust tells the story of Olivia, a beautiful woman suffocated by the propriety and social constraints of her position as the wife of an important English civil servant. Longing for passion and independence, Olivia is drawn into the spell of the Nawab, a minor Indian prince deeply involved in gang raids and criminal plots...."

This sounds interesting enough... and when I'm finished reading it, there's a Merchant-Ivory film version as a reward! Although, The Guardian review claims this is the Coldplay of literature because it is too dull to loathe. Charmed, I'm sure.

"The Coldplay of literature." The "vanilla" of writing about the English in India.

This book was a relatively easy read. The themes were pretty much just under the surface. It wasn't a challenge. And it was another book where "nothing happened." I felt the same way about Holiday, but I LOVED Holiday. The "English-ness" of Holiday completely appealed to me. The "English-ness" of Heat and Dust was just... mildly offensive and Empirical.

I can't remember whether or not the narrator was ever named, but she was such a boring voice. I didn't think that the romance between Olivia and the Nawab was really all that interesting either. I could completely understand going back to the "scene" of this glorious, tragic, exciting scandalous romance, but that's not what this was. It was more along the lines of... my grandfather's first wife left him for a Prince. I decided to check it out. But no one had much to say about it. The End.

The parallels between the narrator and Olivia (expecting babies, acclimating to Indian culture) was interesting, but not told in a very precise way. The alignment of the story was just too lazy to make it have any affect on how I felt about either one of them. I just didn't quite care what happened to either of them.

But I didn't hate the book. It is not terrible, it's just not terribly exciting. It's.... Coldplay. :)
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Jan 14, 2009 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: booker-prize, fiction, lincoln-park-group

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Heat and Dust which won the Booker Prize in 1975 is a short and intense novel. The main story is one of a young woman from England who journeys to India to learn more about her past.
The story is about two ladies in different time spans and their adventures in India. Olivia Rivers is a young lady from London who has accompanied her husband Douglas to British colonial India. While Douglas keeps himself busy at his office , Olivia is left to tend to herself through the long...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Deon Stonehouse rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-set-in-india, great-writing-general-fiction

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is an excellent book to start reading for a Month of India. Like the Classics Book Club selection, A Passage to India by E. M. Forster , Heat and Dust is set in the 1920’s, a time India was chaffing under the rule of the British Raj. It tells the story of a young Englishwoman, Olivia, swept away by the charm and passion of an Indian Prince. Her relationship with the Prince causes a scandal, embarrassing her husband Douglas. British wives of the upper classes...more

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Oct 23, 2011 P_campbe rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really loved this book, except there was a section about from 4/7 to 6/7ths of the way through that I thought was unnecessary. I am a great fan of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and thought that she didn't need to include a couple of chapters and thought the book would have been a 5 stars without them. However, overall I am very pleased and will continue reading her novels...she is a wonderful writer that you really connect with her writing style and her love of the indian life.

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Apr 21, 2013 Johnsergeant rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiblecom, audiobook, india

Narrated by Julie Christie

5 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's Summary

In 1923 the beautiful, spoiled, and bored Olivia, married to Douglas and his career in the Indian Civil Service, outrages the English and Indian communities by eloping with an Indian prince. Fifty years later, Douglas’s granddaughter, armed with Olivia’s letters, goes back to the heat and dust and squalor of the bazaars to find out for herself how Olivia could have been so affected by India that she turned her back on her own country.

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Nov 14, 2012 Grace Oh rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've loved every book I've read by Jhabvala. She has such a quiet, "Merchant Ivory" way to making you consider deep, complex issues. It's no wonder that she is the screen writer for some of their productions. In this book, she looks at British rule of India in a macro (govt) level and person (marriage & community) level. She tells you obliquely about intense issues and doesn't end it all wrapped in a bow. Leaves you hanging...like life does.

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About Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, CBE is a 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. Their films won six Academy Awards.

She fled Cologne with her family in 1939 and lived through the London Blitz....more

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avg rating	preview: Heat and Dust Goodreads rating: 3.57 (2525 ratings)
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3853.Heat_and_Dust?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1344693352l/3853.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3853.Heat_and_Dust?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala[/url]

Heat and Dust

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