Reading log

Welcome to my reading log about Heat and Dust.

Heat and Dust was written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala in 1975.

The story takes place in India and is devided in two different times: in the 1920s during the British rule in India and during the 1970s (which was the present time when Prawer Jhabvala wrote the book).

Motivated by letters, an English woman travels to India in the 1970s to reconstruct the story of her grandfather’s first wife named Olivia. 

In India the narrator comes to know that Olivia was bothered by her life in India as a typical British-government-wife. By attracting the Nawabs attention she fell in love with him and became pregnant.

Olivia performed an abortion and induced a scandal.

By discovering the affair the narrator herself falls in love with an Indian man called Inder Lal and is absolutely affected by India and all it has to offer. Like Olivia she gets pregnant and has to deal with it.

While reading the novel I will collect worth knowing information as well as my own thougts by degrees.