india author m 1- a-nan - University of Wollongong

VARMA, P.N. "A Note on the Novels of R. Prawer Jhabvala" RUSEng 5 (1971):87-96.
WILLIAMS, HAYDN M. "Mad Seekers, Doomed Lovers and Cemeteries in India: On R.P.
Jhabvala's Heat and Dust and A New Dominion" New Literature Review 15 (1988):11-20.
WILLIAMS, HAYDN MOORE. "R.K. Narayan and R. Prawer Jhabvala: Two Interpreters
of Modern India" Literature East and West 16.4 (April 1975):1136-54.
WILLIAMS, HAYDN. "Reactions to Entrapment in 'Backward Places' V.S. Naipaul's
Miguel Street and Ruth Jhabvala's A BAckward Place." In A Sense of Place in the New
Literatures in English edited by Peggy Nightingale, 68-84. St Lucia: U Queensland, 1986
"Colonial history does not make for stability of residence." Comparision of two emigré
writers, Naipaul 'returning' to his birthplace, Jhabvala 'adopting' a new country but depicting
displaced characters seeking return to some elusive 'home'. Miguel Street can be read as a
Joycean bildungsroman of escape (death and birth) and change (war and decolonization), a
comic treatment of madness and violence not unlike Under Milkwood in which Hat serves as
a Christ-like liberator for the disillusioned boy-writer. Jhabvala's figures escape to
responsibilities (Judy and Sudhir) or remain trapped in a sterile retreat from life (Etta and
Clarissa). The three women are seen as aspects of Jhabvala herself. Naipaul also charts the
shift from colourful squalor to shabby trap, though Jhabvala remains ironic about her
'backward place'. Text-based argument, with recourse to autobiographical works by both
writers. [From ‘Full Anotations: Assesses both works as preoccupied with exile and the
psychological connections to images and perceptions of 'home'. Claims these fictions meet in
a common theme of escape. Perceives textual meaning generated by the authors' focus on
psychological self-reflexivity.]
WILLIAMS, HAYDN MOORE. "Strangers in a Backward Place: Modern India in the
Fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala" The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 6.1 (1971):53-64.
Investigates Jhabvala's early fictions within the context of the Hindu concept of the
four ashramas. Attempts to place the major characters of 'Get Ready for Battle', 'The Nature
of Passion', 'The Householder', 'A Backward Place', within a particular phase of the
ashramas. Brahminical moral evaluation serves as the testing material in the background of
Jhabvala's realistic portrayals of the complexity and universality of the Indian urban family
situation.
WILLIAMS, HAYDN MOORE. The Fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Calcutta: Writers'
Workshop, 1973.
WINEGARTEN, RENEE. "Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: A Jewish Passage to India" Midstream
(March 1974):72-9.
Reiterates previous treatments of Anand's work as dominated by concern for the poor
and underprivileged trapped by India's class and caste systems. Closely examines the
character of Ananta and finds him a victim of rage and insanity, not of religious or political
creed, and his sacrifice is that of the unselfish man for humanity. Sociological analysis based on
economic determinism as fundamental principle in a capitalist society.
See also Kakatiya Journal of English Studues Vol. 11 No. 1 Spring 1977:85-92.
WINTERBERG, INGE. "'An Experience of India': Zu den IndienRomanen von Ruth Prawer
Jhabvala" Arcadia 17.2 (1982):171-94.