• Hemlata Singh

  Author

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, a world class fictionist and story teller of the present century, has distinctive achievements as a literary artist. Though she is a European, her marriage to an Indian architect and stay in India has given her deep insight into India’s social, political, religious, economic, moral and cultural life. Her knowledge about the Indian social and cultural ethos can be marked by the variety of themes that she has undertaken in her novels. She has cultivated and demonstrated the literary qualities which are her own and which primarily emerge from the interaction between the peculiar Indian milieu and the Western set up. However, even having the literary situation her distinction is modified and narrowed down by the rather limited quality of her literary achievement, which is, in part, the inevitable result of her choice, and in part, the artistic outcome of her creativity. This peculiar paradox of her attainments as an artist, is in a way rooted in the environs of her literary effort, and is co-extensive with the range and quality of her fiction. The present paper is an exploration of her artistic vision and literary craftsmanship.

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