Product Description

This brilliant collection spans two worlds - the restless, aspiring society of New York's Upper East Side and the world of India's capital city, New Delhi, where the old India symbolized by Gandhi's spinning wheel is giving way to one powered by industry and property development. A rich cast of characters inhabits these stories - Indian businessmen and holy women, students, society hostesses and ambitious young politicians; New Yorkers preoccupied with money yet also in search of meaning - anxious and often manipulative parents, alienated children, men and women struggling with their longings and failures and their complicated sex lives. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's quiet but insistent probing goes to the very heart of her characters, showing us all their complexities and contradictions. In these absorbing stories, there is a feeling of ambivalence, a subtle sensuality and a poignant sense of time passing. Like all great storytellers, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala suggests many questions but supplies no easy answers. This is a fascinating and wonderfully readable collection which is also a literary event.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #148983 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 345 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The "East" of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's East into Upper East refers to India's sprawling metropolis, New Delhi; the "Upper East", not surprisingly, is that other big city, New York. In this short-story collection, Jhabvala explores the nature of love on two continents. The first tales take place in India. In "Expiation", the narrator, an affluent cloth broker, must deal with a much beloved but mentally unstable younger brother. Many years of closing his eyes to the evidence of his brother's delinquency eventually puts the entire family at risk. In "Farid and Farida" a marriage that had soured when transported from India to London reanimates in an unconventional way when the two estranged spouses meet again years later under a Banyan tree in India. Jhabvala moves from the six stories set on the subcontinent to New York with "The Temptress" in which an Indian holy woman is literally imported to the States by a wealthy American. From there, the author delves into the lives of Manhattanites. In "Fidelity," for example, Dave, his wife, Sophie, and his sister, Betsy, live in a symbiotic relationship stronger than betrayal, disappointment and even death.

The subtitle of Jhabvala's collection is Plain Tales from New York and New Delhi, and plain they are--if by that you mean stories that are straightforward in the telling. This is not to say, however, that they are not subtle. Jhabvala's characters are multifaceted and the situations in which they find themselves complex. In East into Upper East she proves once again that a complicated story can be plainly told, yet resonate all the more powerfully for its simple elegance and economy. --Margaret Prior

Review
'The collection is pure pleasure, a feast of strong and subtle flavours accentuating the unattractive underbelly as well as the shining face of both East and West' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Complex and delicate stories expressed with controlled precision' SPECTATOR 'Whole worlds - social, physical, emotional, financial - are exhilaratingly and meticulously contained and defined' MAIL ON SUNDAY

SPECTATOR
'Complex and delicate stories expressed with controlled precision'

Customer Reviews

A spectacular collection of short stories -
I hate short stories I love this book. RPJ deserves a medal for this spectacular collection of stories, every one of which develops character and plot with more finesse than most good novels. Give it a go,she's worth it