Whether producing her award-winning novels or working as the screenwriting member of Merchant-Ivory, the film industry's longest-lasting creative team, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (born 1927) contributes a respected voice to modern literature.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's perspective as a creative writer is one born of the conflict between East and West, a conflict that mirrors her life as a citizen of both worlds. Born in Germany to Polish parents, Jhabvala, the daughter of a lawyer, began writing stories at age six. In the prewar days, she and her brother attended segregated Jewish schools, which "wasn't pleasant," as Jhabvala told People reporter Harriet Shapiro. "Other children would scream after us and throw stones."

Jhabvala and her family left Germany for England in 1939, where they survived the London Blitz--the constant blitzkreig bombing of the city by German war planes. But tragedy was to follow: as Shapiro noted, Jhabvala's father, depressed by the loss...