SOURCE: "Passage to India: The Career of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala," in The New Criterion, Vol. VI, No. 4, December, 1987, pp. 5-19.

Bawer is an American literary critic. In the following essay, he analyzes several of Jhabvala's novels, including The Householder, Travelers, and Heat and Dust, commending her more recent works for including American characters, while criticizing them for their preoccupation with Westerners who try to become Indians.

Probably most Americans who recognize the name of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala know her mainly as a screenwriter, one third of the celebrated international movie-making team whose other members are the Indian producer Ismail Merchant and the American director James Ivory. In this country, at least, Jhabvala and her partners are known almost exclusively for three recent films that were based upon major modern novels: The Europeans (1978) and The Bostonians (1984) both derived from works by Henry James, and A Room with a View...