SOURCE: “Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Stories from India Reissued,” in The Wall Street Journal, June 19, 1990, p. A18.

In the following review, Rubin offers a positive assessment of ten of Jhabvala's novels rereleased by Simon & Schuster.

Talking about contemporary writers, Dame Rebecca West once mentioned that one of her favorites was “that Polish woman with the Indian name who lives in New York.”

Well, that in a nutshell pretty much describes Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, whose 10 novels Simon & Schuster has now finished reprinting in paperback. A more prolix biographer might also add that she was born in 1927 to Polish Jewish parents, came to England as a refugee in 1939, attended London University, and then moved in 1951 to India with her husband, the Indian architect C. S. H. Jhabvala, before heading for New York 24 years later.

Along the way she won the Booker Prize for her novel Heat and Dust and an Academy...