Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, CBE was a Booker prize-winning novelist, short story writer, and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter. She was perhaps best known for her long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of director James Ivory and the late producer Ismail Merchant. Their films won six Academy Awards.

She fled Cologne with her family in 1939 and lived through the London Blitz. After university she moved to Delhi, India her home for 24 years (until 1975). She began to write fiction, exploring east-west encounters, and won the Booker prize. Based in New York until she died in 2013, she is best known for her Oscar-winning screenplays and her novel 'Heat and Dust'.