The International ‘Trick’: Three Continents

Abstract

After the publication of In Search of Love and Beauty, Ruth Jhabvala’s career may be said to have arrived at a new plateau. The year 1986 saw the release of the Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala film based on Forster’s A Room with a View, which received three Academy Awards and was widely viewed by mass audiences. With that, Jhabvala as screenwriter emerged into celebrity status. That same year, John Murray in England and William Morrow in the United States brought out a new collection of her stories-all of them reprints-calling it Out of India (perhaps in response to the filmed version of Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa, also being viewed by millions). Jhabvala began to receive coverage in the popular and literary press that outdid anything that had come before for her; and 1987 saw still more publicity, especially with the appearance of her tenth novel, Three Continents (London: John Murray; New York: William Morrow).