East Into Upper East

Hailed as one of the best books of 1998 by the Los Angeles Times, this group of twelve short stories was written over the past twenty years. From the steamy streets of New Delhi to New York's tony Upper East Side, Jhabvala's characters grapple with the universal quandaries of the human experience–jealousy, passion, temptation, and deception–truths of life and love that follow no matter where we wander."This new collection of stories … reaffirms her as a spellbinding urban fabulist.… Each story reveals Jhabvala's mastery of the form." New York Times Book Review "Elegantly, even suavely written, each of these pieces has the brooding melancholy of a James Joyce story but with an additional sharpness, a heightened emotional violence that seems somehow more personal than the removal of Joyce's Catholicism." Oregonian, Portland, Oregon "Jhabvala captures unusual domestic arrangements with a familial intimacy that makes the sudden primal turns of her plots––to sex, violence, betrayal––shocking." The New Yorker "One of Jhabvala's great skills is the ability to be simultaneously caustic and compassionate about her characters and to combine sensuality with toughminded humor. It is for skills such as these that she is compared with Chekhov and Henry James." Seattle Times "Every story revolves around fully realized characters, whether a wily Indian politician or a betrayed New York wife, and tells a tale full of emotional drama and truth." Literary Review "The individualization of the characters and the author's ability to make trenchant their fictional lives bring new fascination to every story by this glorious writer." Morning News, Dallas, Texas "The author is too modest. Written over a span of twenty years, the thirteen stories gathered here are not 'plain' at all. Rather, they're rich in character, observation and insight." Publishers WeeklyRuth Prawer Jhabvala is the author of nineteen books. She is the recipient of Booker Prize, a MacArthur fellowship, and has been honored with an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Jhabvala's screenplays for Merchant–Ivory Productions have earned two Academy Awards. Jhabvala and her husband divide their time between Delhi and New York.