Three Continents - Hardcover

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was born in Germany of Polish parents and came to England in 1939 at the age of twelve. She graduated from Queen Mary College, London University, and married the Indian architect C.S.H. Jhabvala. They lived in Delhi from 1951 to 1975. Since then they have divided their time between Delhi, New York and London. As well as her numerous novels and short stories, in collaboration with James Ivory and Ismail Merchant Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has written scripts for film and television, including A Room with a View and Howards End, both of which are Academy Award winners. She won the Booker Prize for Heat and Dust in 1975, the Neil Gunn International Fellowship in 1978, the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1984 and was made a CBE in the 1998 New Year's Honours List.

Though now widely known for her screenplay of A Room with a View, Jhabvala's literary reputation still rests on her subtle fiction grounded in psychological authenticity. This long novel, set in New York, London and India, is a penetrating psychological study of a young woman generously endowed with breeding and money but starved of self-esteem and purpose. Jhabvala describes the emotional seduction of Harriet Wishwell by the members of a fanatic religious sect, the Fourth World Movement, as well as her physical seduction by one of its leaders. Harriet and her homosexual twin brother Michael are equally drawn to charismatic Crishi, who marries Harriet for the huge inheritance she'll receive on her 21st birthday. Crishi and his cohorts are swindlers and dope pushers, activities they hide behind the movement's pious facade. Jhabvala's evocation of their smarmy appeal is a masterpiece of its kind, as is her portrayal of the restlessness of young people searching for an emotional haven. But Harriet's innocence, credulity and passivity are too broadly drawn; the reader becomes exasperated, wanting to shake sense into her obtuse brain. As Harriet and Michael are used, abused and humiliated, mulcted of their money and their self-respect, the narrative becomes tedious, and the ending is sadly predictable.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.