Cons: unsympathetic main characters; frustrating open ending
The Bottom Line: A young Englishwoman visits India in the 70s to try and make sense of a 50-year-old family scandal involving her step-grandmother and a charismatic Indian prince.
jc_hall's Full Review: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Heat and Dust
Intrigued by a 50-year-old family scandal involving her step-grandmother Olivia and a charismatic Indian prince, a young Englishwoman travels to India during the '70s. She has with her the letters that Olivia wrote while living in India, and studies them while she settles down near the place where Olivia lived. Unlike Olivia, who enjoyed the trappings of a high-ranking civil servant’s wife during the Raj, Anne studies Hindi and lives simply among the locals. She also visits the places where Olivia lived and visited, like the palace of the Nawab—the minor Indian prince for whom Olivia left her husband.
While researching the past, the present inevitably intervenes for Anne, in the shape of Inder Lal, a government official who sublets her room to her and tries to shield her from the more squalid aspects of India, and Chid, a would-be Hindu sage who speaks with a Midlands accent and expects not just food from her. She also accompanies Inder Lal’s widow mother on trips with the latter’s friends, and gets to know different aspects of their culture—not just adopting their food and dress, but also getting involved in their customs.
Even though the characters of Anne and Olivia are poles apart, the former vain and self-centred, shallow and pleasure-seeking, the latter pragmatic and down-to-earth, their respective journeys in India evolve with unsettling parallels.
Heat and Dust is both Olivia’s story and Anne’s, and the two women’s stories and viewpoints alternate throughout the book. While Anne’s is played out in the present in the form of diary entries, Olivia’s is recounted with as much immediacy and even more urgency, as we already know Olivia’s fate and are basically watching her hurtle towards it. The author draws us in with her evocative description of a land steeped in mysticism and wallowing in squalor—the heat and the dust are palpable—and the sights and sounds and especially the people are brought to life by the author’s painstaking detailing of characters living in two very disparate time periods of India’s history.
The characterization is exemplary—we get to really know some of these people, perhaps better than they do themselves, often merely by reading between the lines. However, few of the main characters are truly sympathetic. Olivia is spoilt and selfish, the Nawab is a veritable scoundrel, while Anne’s motivation is obscure, perhaps even to herself. The ending also leaves something to be desired, being open to the point of frustration. Having said that, this novel is a highly enjoyable read and will appeal to most anyone.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala won the Booker Prize with Heat and Dust in 1975. Born in Germany to Polish parents in 1927, she moved to England in 1939, married an Indian man in 1951, and relocated to New Delhi. She has won awards for her screenplays, in collaboration with Merchant Ivory, for films including Room with a View, Howard’s End, and Remains of the Day.
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