A transnational history of a writer in four packages

Abstract

• The novel, short story and screenplay writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala died in 2013 and bequeathed her literary papers to the British Library in London. There they joined the Contemporary Collections which include the literary archives of Angela Carter, Harold Pinter, Shiva Naipaul and Hanif Kureishi. Prawer Jhabvala’s rich sixty-year contribution to literature and film won her the accolade, unchallenged to date, as the only person to have a Booker Prize (for Heat and Dust, 1975) and two Oscars (for adapting A Room with a View in 1987 and Howards End in 1993). She also received a BAFTA for adapting Heat and Dust in 1984, and its Fellowship in 2002; the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts (1976); the Neil Gunn Fellowship (1979); the MacArthur Fellowship in 1984; and the O Henry Prize for the short story in 2005. The transnational recognition she received was a testament to the multifaceted aspects of her career in both film and prose.