East Into Upper East

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

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This brilliant collection spans two worlds - the restless, aspiring society of New York's Upper East Side and the world of India's capital city, New Delhi, where the old India symbolized by Gandhi's spinning wheel is giving way to one powered by industry and property development. A rich cast of characters inhabits these stories - Indian businessmen and holy women, students, society hostesses and ambitious young politicians; New Yorkers preoccupied with money yet also in search of meaning - anxious and often manipulative parents, alienated children, men and women struggling with their longings and failures and their complicated sex lives.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's quiet but insistent probing goes to the very heart of her characters, showing us all their complexities and contradictions. In these absorbing stories, there is a feeling of ambivalence, a subtle sensuality and a poignant sense of time passing. Like all great storytellers, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala suggests many questions but supplies no easy answers. This is a fascinating and wonderfully readable collection which is also a literary event.

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Praise for East Into Upper East

  • Complex and delicate stories expressed with controlled precision - SPECTATORThe collection is pure pleasure, a feast of strong and subtle flavours accentuating the unattractive underbelly as well as the shining face of both East and West - DAILY TELEGRAPHWhole worlds - social, physical, emotional, financial - are exhilaratingly and meticulously contained and defined - MAIL ON SUNDAY

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Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala published twelve novels including the Booker Prize-winning Heat and Dust and five volumes of short stories. She also wrote more than a dozen screenplays, including Howard's End and A Room with a View, for both of which she received an Academy Award. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala died in 2013.

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