Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Writing
Born May 7, 1927 · Cologne, Weimar Republic [now Germany]
Died April 3, 2013
Biography
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, CBE (7 May 1927 – 3 April 2013) was a German-born British and American 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 producer Ismail Merchant. After meeting Cyrus Jhabvala in England, she married him and moved to India in 1951; Jhabvala was an Indian-Parsi architect. The couple lived in New Delhi and had three daughters. Jhabvala began then to elaborate her experiences in India and wrote novels and tales on Indian subjects. She wrote a dozen novels, 23 screenplays, and eight collections of short stories and was made a CBE in 1998 and granted a joint fellowship by BAFTA in 2002 with Ivory and Merchant.She is the only person to have won both a Booker Prize and an Oscar.
Awards & recognition
- O. Henry Award · 2005
- Commander of the Order of the British Empire · 1998
- Academy Award — Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay · 1993
- Academy Award — Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay · 1987
- MacArthur Fellows Program · 1984
Show all 13 awards →
- BAFTA Award — Best Adapted Screenplay · 1983
- Guggenheim Fellowship · 1976
- Booker Prize · 1975
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
- Writers Guild of America Award
- Academy Award — Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay · 1994 · nominated
- Academy Award — Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay · 1993 · nominated
- Academy Award — Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay · 1987 · nominated
Filmography16 titles
The Remains of the Day
Howards End
A Room with a View
Madame Sousatzka
Shakespeare-Wallah
Mr. & Mrs. Bridge
Heat and Dust
Surviving Picasso
Quartet
The City of Your Final Destination
The Bostonians
The Europeans
Autobiography of a Princess
Jefferson in Paris
Roseland
The Divorce