Hailed as one of the best books of 1998 by the Los Angeles Times, this group of twelve short stories was written over the past twenty years. From the steamy streets of New Delhi to New Yorks tony Upper East Side, Jhabvalas characters grapple with the universal quandaries of the human experiencejealousy, passion, temptation, and deceptiontruths of life and love that follow no matter where we wander. This collection features new short fiction from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Booker Prizewinning author of Heat and Dust and Academy Awardwinning screenwriter of Howards End and A Room With a View . Written over the past twenty years, these engrossing stories are domestic tapestries, threaded with the emotional lives and complex psychologies of intense lovers, quarreling married couples, weary elders, and their restless adult children. Whether languishing inside their shuttered New Delhi homes or hosting dinner parties in the overfurnished apartments of their Manhattan high-rises, Jhabvalas characters grapple with the universal quandaries of the human experience--jealousy, passion, temptation, deception--and truths of life and love that follow no matter where we wander. Written over twenty years and featuring settings that range from the crowded bazaars of India to New Yorks Upper East Side, this magnificent collection brings together fourteen new stories by a writer of unparalleled grace, insight, and emotional power. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, well-known for her Merchant-Ivory screenplays and her Booker Prize-winning novel Heat and Dust, claims unique territory in her short fiction, occupying the cusp between two worlds, India and the West. She expertly mingles the two in subject matter, perspective, and style to offer stories of universal appeal.Whether languishing inside their shuttered New Delhi homes or hosting dinner parties in their baroque Manhattan apartments, Jhabvalas characters are men and women of sensual passions and worldly ambition. They confront loneliness and neglect, struggle for independence in a world of manners and manipulations, and adjust to both welcome and unwelcome guests who stay too long and change their hosts lives in devastating ways. Hers are stories of elegance and exquisite delicacy, weaving complex domestic tapestries that range over entire lives. A proper Indian gentleman tries to help his wayward younger brother. A grand hostess on the eve of Indias independence uses her power for personal and political ends. A frail New York socialite tries to understand her daughters alternative life. And a circle of emotionally empty, upperclass New Yorkers adopts an old Indian woman as their spiritual guide.To read these stories is to succumb to the power of a true master--a writer who spans two worlds and who uses this singular perspective to illuminate hidden truths. The sensuousness of India, the neuroses of New York--both are portrayed vividly in these powerful narratives and marvelous entertainments.