Customer Reviews

Heat and Dust

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The British experience in India is a subject that has been given thorough literary treatment during the past century, and most of these books have tried to highlight some aspect of the cultural contrast between east and west. E.M. Forster's "A Passage to India" is perhaps the most comprehensive of these, but Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's "Heat and Dust" makes an admirable effort to contribute to the Forsterian legacy by updating the milieu to a post-independence setting while keeping one foot firmly in the past.

The novel concerns a young English woman, the narrator, who arrives in Bombay intending to make it her home for a while and to reconstruct the story of the doomed marriage of her grandfather, a law officer named Douglas Rivers, and his first wife, Olivia, from a collection of intriguing letters that Olivia had written to her sister Marcia. From the beginning Jhabvala splits the novel into two parallel narratives, alternating between the Riverses in 1923 and the narrator in India fifty years later, who presents her adventures, thoughts, and reflections in the form of a journal.

Olivia Rivers is a bored housewife who has little to do besides playing the piano and chatting with the other British officers' wives until she becomes enamored with the charming Indian prince, called the Nawab, who governs the district Douglas serves. A living emblem of amoral corruption and aristocratic gluttony, the Nawab dwells in an ancestral palace that arrogantly overlooks the wretched slums of the neighboring town and supports an entourage of servants and sycophantic companions including an effeminate Englishman named Harry. Jhabvala employs these elements to shape a dramatic arc that leads from extramarital attraction to adultery and finally to Olivia's disgrace following an ugly scandal for which she could never be forgiven back in England.

The narrator's analogous existence within the pages gives the novel an even broader context; she too falls in love with an Indian man, although a much humbler one, a meek clerk named Inder Lal. She also observes that India is a magnet for Europeans in search of a certain spirituality that they have failed to find in Western religions; in particular she meets a young Englishman who has become a Hindu ascetic, calling himself Chid, but who cannot handle the hardships of a land of such disease and poverty. The novel's title refers to the general climate of the region of which the narrator writes, a scorching exacerbation of the hopeless squalor in which the vast majority of the population lives.

I am aware that Jhabvala has written screenplays based on classic novels, including Forster's, for the Merchant-Ivory film team, and I confess that I somewhat expected "Heat and Dust" to be a pastiche of Forster, but I was pleased to find that Jhabvala, although like Forster a lucid and elegant prose stylist, has a distinctive literary voice, specifically in her shrewd eye for the particularities of Indian culture. From the suttee stones, morbid monuments to Hindu widows who have immolated themselves in their husbands' funeral pyres, to the British cemeteries memorializing the soldiers fallen in the 1857 mutinies, "Heat and Dust" is a valuable tour through 1920s and 1970s India.

Jhabvala's book, Heat and Dust, is set India, in two eras - the 1920's and the 1970's. The two time periods are brought together through the narrator. She has journeyed to India to research the life of her grandfather's first wife, Olivia, who left him to marry an Indian prince. The narrator chronicles her own Indian adventures while telling the reader what she has learned of Olivia. The device of using the journal is very well done, and allows the reader to see how the lives of these two women intersect in very profound ways.

The descriptions of India throughout the book in both eras were amazing and very evocative, both of the individual eras and of the landscape.

While technically very well written, I did not find the book fully enjoyable. I did not feel as though the characters of either of the two women were fully fleshed out, and I found this distracting throughout the book. Many of the minor characters were even less well developed, and this made them seem like little more than stereotypes.

While not the best book I have read recently, it is short and a quick read, and worth the time.

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

I really did enjoy the book for the most part. It was fun light reading. My trouble with the book is that it could have been so much more. Both female characters could have had whole novels written about them but we never get beyond of the surface of either one of them. You got a favor of the riches and depavity of old Indian culture but no details. Again my major fault is not that the book was bad but that the book itself hinted at what it could be but wasn't.

This is a well-written book that explores Anglo-Indian relations through the power of romance. Set in two distinct eras, colonial India of the nineteen twenties, during the time of the Raj, and the independent, freewheeling India of the seventies, during the time when India was a mecca for disenfranchised youth, it tells the story of two women.

One story is that of Olivia, the wife of a minor district official in colonial India, who in 1923 caused great scandal by running off with the Nawab, a local Indian prince. Divorced by her husband, Douglas, for this scandalous transgression, Olivia remains in India, while Douglas remarries. The second story is that of the narrator, a descendant of Douglas and his second wife. During the nineteen seventies, fascinated by the story of the now deceased Olivia, she goes to India, visiting those locations where Olivia had lived and those that would have been a part of her existence at the time. As did Olivia, she falls under India's spell. As did Olivia, she, too, has an Anglo-Indian love affair, and picks up where Olivia left off, giving the reader a powerful sense of de-ja vu.

The book is a beguiling story of two women from two different generations who come under the spell of India. The book is evocative of British colonial India, as well as of India of the nineteen seventies. During both eras, Anglo-Indian relations are pivotal to the budding romances. The book is evocative of the rhythms of Indian life in all its richness and tumultuousness, as well as its lingering poverty and superstitions. It is redolent of a time gone by and hopeful of what is to come. It is also an interesting dichotomy of the good and bad in both cultures, Anglo and Indian, and the influence that both cultures have on these two women, who are so different, yet so alike.

This is a book that whets the appetite, leaving the reader wanting more than the author is prepared to give. It is, nonetheless, a book well worth reading. The book was also made into a Merchant Ivory film starring Julie Christie and Greta Scacchi that is well worth watching.

I needn't repeat the story here--very briefly, the author creates two women's lives, one the wife of a British colonial officer in the 1920's, the other his grand niece who returns to India 50 years later to unravel the mystery of Olivia, the officer's wife who ran away with an Indian prince. To understand the historical background, it helps to know that British India was in fact governed in two ways--the British controlled part of the country directly, but at least half of India was still under the rule of Indian princes, who were granted an allowance by the British who expected them to maintain order in their states. The Nawab was one of these princes.

From a historical point of view the novel was fascinating in describing the lives of the British as the Empire disintegrated--their kindly arrogance, their isolation from the people, the idleness of their families. No wonder Olivia was lured away! And the Nawab's life was worse--we see him resorting to crime and extortion to maintain his luxurious life-style as ethnic conflict swirls around him.

This work won the Booker prize. But from a novelistic point of view it left me unsatisfied. Rather improbably, the two women follow paralell paths, each becoming pregnant as a result of affairs with Indian men. Olivia ends up sequestered in a house maintained for her by the Nawab in the mountains--it seems that she is totally alone, not even having a relationship with him. Douglas' niece also ends up heading toward the mountains, but to a very different kind of life, one that promises spiritual and personal fulfillment.

Is she "redeeming" Olivia's life through her different choices? Has she made peace with India, in contrast to Olivia, who let it destroy her? Perhaps this is the rather clumsy point. I enjoyed this novel, and you will too, for its historical perspective and description of life in India during two very different periods, although separated by only 50 years. The plot is contrived but don't let that bother you.

It was a really great novel, I really enjoyed reading it. Towards the end though it changed. it seemed to me that someone else wrote the ending, or as if she had been in a hurry to finish it off. It is a pity though to spoil such a great story! I liked the way she managed to clearly separate the two stories, but at the same time they were linked. It was evident when we were in 1923, and when in the narrator's present. One advice: don't watch the movie, it will spoil the book a lot, it is very superficial, and it is hard to understand the concepts behind it without having read the book in advance. However STICK TO THE BOOK!!It is worth reading, don't mind the ending......

"Heat and Dust" rarely evoked the images of either of these two things for me.... Perhaps it was such a richly human novel concentrating most centrally on the feelings of women and their problems at two different moments in Indian history that I was more caught up in the drama of its characters than in the Indian landscape. Heat and Dust is not a dry novel. I think that one of the most interesting aspects of the novel is the shared story between Olivia, the young woman from the 1920's, and the unnamed young woman of the 1970's who is the granddaughter of Olivia's British husband. The parallels between their lives are beautifully set aside one another, while at the same time, using the two women as a guide, we can see how India and the lives of women around the world have changed in the short span of fifty years. It is interesting to note how Ruth Prawer Jhabwala manages to show this huge contrast using the lives of two white English women as her instrument. If you are looking for a complex saga, this is not your type of novel, because "Heat and Dust" is quite simple and straightforward, but I think it is an interesting pair of stories for both women and men who are interested in India and interested in how choices can affect our lives. It is mind-boggling for me to think how different two women's lives can be due to the simple fact that their dates of birth are a few decades apart, but in "Heat and Dust" we can see that this seemingly simple factor changed the courses of millions of lives, while for others the years change little or nothing at all. Enjoy reading!

HEAT AND DUST is Jhabvala's most famous novel, but it's never really made it into the bigtime of novels concerning Anglo-Indian relations. Although sensitively and intelligently written, the novel's biggest problem is that the two major female characters aren't fully fleshed out: there seems to be much less to interest us regarding the narrator (who is almost a total cypher) and Olivia than there is regarding the Nawab and Chid. Still, the evocations of India both in the Seventies and the Twenties are quite marvelous. All in all, I'd say this is a well-written novel, but not quite up to the level of such other works which take on a similar theme as Paul Scott's THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN or Rumer Godden's THE PEACOCK SPRING.

The best novel I have ever read depicting an Indian Story Line. Though the author is not considered an Indian, she displays her thoughts in a classical but respectful way....