I only really woke up in India. It was my first experience of plenty, strangely enough, because everything in England was rationed. I loved sweets, but you couldn't get them; then there was this marvelous mitthai - I went crazy.

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• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala:

  All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were

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• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala:

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• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala:

  I was never interested in film. Never. I never even thought of it. I wasn't even a film buff, I did

• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala:

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• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala:

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• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala:

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• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala:

  One doesn't choose to become a writer. One is just born that way.

• Ruth Prawer Jhabvala:

  I never really had any close friends in India, and I felt a terrible loneliness and isolation for m