From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Holly Smith
Heat and Dust views India through the lives of two English women living fifty years apart. Olivia is the first wife of an English government official assigned to India in the 1920s. The unnamed narrator the story is the young granddaughter of the same official by a later wife who, intrigued by family rumors about Olivia, travels to India seeking answers to Olivia's mysterious existence. How, in a segregated society, did Olivia meet an Indian prince of questionable character, and why did she leave her husband for him? What happened to her afterwards? As the narrator stays in the town where Olivia lived and visits places that influenced Olivia's life, we witness India's past through Olivia's letters and journals and the narrator's imagination. For Olivia, removed from the day-to-day existence of the Indian people, India "was like being not in a different part of this world but in another world altogether, in another reality." In contrast, the narrator sublets a room that shares a courtyard with an Indian family and learns much about their life. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala shows us both pre- and post-independent India, exposing the similarities and differences of India's impact on each of these women. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.

ANNOTATION

A penetrating and compassionate love story, this brilliant novel immerses the reader in the heat, dust, and squalor of India.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Set in colonial India during the 1920s, Heat and Dust tells the story of Olivia, a beautiful woman suffocated by the propriety and social constraints of her position as the wife of an important English civil servant. Longing for passion and independence, Olivia is drawn into the spell of the Nawab, a minor Indian prince deeply involved in gang raids and criminal plots. She is intrigued by the Nawab's charm and aggressive courtship, and soon begins to spend most of her days in his company. But then she becomes pregnant, and unsure of the child's paternity, she is faced with a wrenching dilemma. Her reaction to the crisis humiliates her husband and outrages the British community, breeding a scandal that lives in collective memory long after her death.

FROM THE CRITICS

NY Times Book Review