To Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, The Merchant-Ivory Screenplays Were A Hobby

Notwithstanding the fact that she won Oscars for two of her scripts (A Room with a View and Howards End) for the filmmaking couple, she considered herself primarily a prose writer. Historian Maya Jasanoff offers a survey of her work, which she characterizes as a blend of Jane Austen and V.S. Naipaul. — The New Yorker