Heat and Dust MP3 CD – Unabridged

Amazon was the only place I could acquire a copy of this book. My "used" edition lacks its dust jacket but is otherwise in excellent condition.It took me a few days, after reading Heat and Dust to formulate my thoughts. Haunting, enigmatic, spellbinding, are adjectives critics use when they don't understand what's in front of them, and they don't apply here.I admit to not having heard of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala until the summer of 2019 when I embarked on buying and reading all the Booker Prize winnners. Heat and Dust was one of a mere two books shortlisted for the prize in 1975; although just one year earlier, judges had been spoilt for choice and shared out the prize for the first time.Scouring shops for a second-hand copy of Heat and Dust, I spotted a few Ruth Prawer Jhabvala titles, but my first sample of her work was watching Merchant Ivory Productions' Remains of the Day for which she wrote the screenplay (after it too had won the Booker Prize). Yet the novelist with whom she is perhaps most closely associated is E. M. Forster, having adapted several of his books for the silver screen; and like him she takes foreigners adrift as a theme in this novel.Most of the English characters in Heat and Dust are on journeys of self-discovery. All of their quests, however, appear to have seized up in the heat and dust of the title. Chid is a Hindu convert whose experiences in India lead him back to Western values and a retreat to England. Harry, likewise, is physically ruined by India and is drawn home. Two female characters ultimately stay on the subcontinent but voyage north, high into the Himalayas – an ascension from the world below, particularly the heat and dust.The novel consists of two interrelated plots, which are easily followable, the narrative being split between 1923 (principally concerning Olivia) and the present-day, presumably the 1970s (involving the unnamed female narrator).I heard echoes of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, with its unchristened narrator who is intrigued – not to say haunted – by the memory of the dead first wife of her English (and here the parallel comes to an abrupt end) grandfather, her name being not Rebecca but Olivia.There are many points of similarity in Olivia's and the later female narrator's journeys. The way each chooses to handle the contrasting circumstances of the India in which she finds herself (pre- and post-independence), and the way the author subtly points up these parallels simply by juxtaposing them, strengthens the novel.Disturbing relationships arise throughout both time frames: between the Nawab – a minor prince – and his homosexual house "guest" of three years, Harry; between the Nawab and Olivia; between the present-day narrator and her married Indian host, Inder Lal, and also with her extraordinarily endowed roommate, Chid:"[Chid] also needs sex very badly and seems to take it for granted that I will give it to him the same way I give him my food. I have never had such a feeling of being used.Every now and then he gets those monstrous erections of his and I have to fight him off (quite apart from anything else it's just too hot)."Such scenes of casual – verging on abusive – sex with Chid were, as I understand it, excised from the author's own screenplay to the 1983 adaptation (another Merchant Ivory Production). Her filmic counterpart is thus saved the ignominy of conducting affairs with two men interchangeably, sometimes in the same room:"After Chid moved back in again, Inder Lal at first felt shy about his nightly visits. But I have assured him that it is all right because Chid is mostly sleeping. He just lies there and groans and it is difficult to believe that it is the same person who performed all those tremendous feats on me."Here and elsewhere the narrator's privacy (and morality) apparently deteriorate to nothing – this is a world where onlookers and midwives know the inner workings of a woman's body before she knows herself.Is the ending, then, an attempt to reestablish privacy? Escaping from the heat and dust, Olivia and the narrator are similarly - and, certainly in the latter case, willingly - exiled to the mountains. But when does privacy become imprisonment and defeat? The final pages were strongly reminiscent of the alpine climax in D H Lawrence's Women In Love, with the prospect of death unspoken but inescapable.In the end, India cast its spell over Olivia and her proselyte, in a way that it didn't quite for Chid or Harry or this reader.

This book was highly recommended by a very dear friend who is an avid reader so the expectations were quite high. I am very happy that the book lived up to these expectations. Awesome book. Interesting story.

Libro arrivato in condizioni ottime, niente per cui lamentarmi. Venditore efficiente, veloci nella spedizioni pur essendo gratuita. Null'altro da aggiungere.

Livre en parfait été. Acheté sur les demandes de mes professeurs d'anglais. Je n'ai pas encore eu l'occasion de le lire.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's powerful and beautifully written novel of an "outrageous" Anglo-Indian romance in 1920s Khatm and Satipur won the Booker Prize in 1983. The author has crafted parallel tales of two young women, distantly related and separated by two generations. Anne, the story's narrator, travels to India to discover more about the mystery surrounding her grandfather's first wife, Olivia.Douglas Rivers, an upper echelon English civil servant, married and brought his adored wife, Olivia, with him to India in 1923, during the British Raj. She was a beautiful, spoiled and spirited young woman, who found it difficult to adjust to life in the British colonial community of Satipur. Feeling suffocated by the inbred group she was forced to socialize with, Olivia longed for independence, intellectual stimulation and a more passionate life. She hoped that a baby would solve her problems but found it more difficult to become pregnant than she had thought. Shortly after their arrivel in India, Douglas, Olivia and some of the more important members of the community were invited to the palace of the Nawab of Khatm and she was immediately intrigued by the handsome, charismatic prince. He courted her friendship aggressively and then the friendship turned passionate. When faced with a crisis Olivia was forced to make life altering decisions which would have far reaching effects and cause scandal throughout British India and England that would last for generations.Anne stays in the town where her grandfather and Olivia lived fifty years before. Trying to piece together the puzzle that was Olivia and discover what motivated her to change her life so drastically, Anne visits the places her "step-grandmother" frequented and interviews people who knew her or knew of her. She also reads the letters and journals that Olivia wrote so long ago, and oddly enough, Anne ventures into experiences similar to Olivia's adventures, but more acceptable in our modern time. Anne's spiritual and sensual journey in the 1970s parallels Olivia's as the color, heat, exotic landscapes, and people of India penetrate her western upbringing. Anne writes in her own diary: "Fortunately, during my first few months here, I kept a journal, so I have some record of my early impressions. If I were to try and recollect them now, I might not be able to do so. They are no longer the same because I myself am no longer the same. India always changes people, and I have been no exception."This short and delicately written novel packs a powerful punch and paints an extraordinary portrait of British colonials in India, with their sense of cultural and moral superiority over the local population. However, even more compelling and unusual, is the story of two women, generations apart, who follow similar paths under the spell of India.JANA