Heat and Dust

Summary

A young Englishwoman travels to India in the 1970s to investigate the life of her step-grandmother, whose elopement with an Indian prince scandalised the colonial society of the 1920s. Jhabvala braids the two timelines together, letting the modern narrator's experiences echo and complicate those of her ancestor. The book is a precise, ironic meditation on cultural fascination, repetition and the seductions of an India shaped by Western longing.