04/04/2013 - Writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, whose scripts for Howards End and A Room With A View earned her two Oscars, has died

The curtains have fallen on a long and storied life and career. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, doyenne of screenwriters, died on Wednesday in New York after complications following a pulmonary illness. She was 85. Ruth Prawer was born in Cologne, Germany, the daughter of a Jewish émigré from Poland. Fearing persecution, the family moved to London in 1939 and Ruth Prawer completed her education there. She married Indian architect Cyrus Jhabvala in 1951 and relocated to Delhi where she wrote a series of India-set novels beginning with To Whom She Will.

The world of cinema remembers Ruth Prawer Jhabvala for her long and remarkable association with director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant. The association began with Jhabvala adapting her own 1960 novel The Householder for the Merchant-Ivory combine. A string of original screenplays and literary adaptations followed including Shakespeare-Wallah, The Guru, Bombay Talkie and The Europeans.

Jhabvala won the Best Adapted Screenplay BAFTA for adapting her Booker-winning novel Heat And Dust, and Oscars for her adaptations of E.M. Forster’s A Room With A View and Howard’s End. In all, she worked with Merchant-Ivory on 22 films.

Jhabvala leaves behind a legacy of evoking past eras in a lyrical manner. Her last film was The City Of Your Final Destination, an adaptation of Peter Cameron’s novel directed by Ivory. Her husband Cyrus and her daughters Renana, Firoza and Ava survive her.