Skip to main content

The Householder by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: book review

 




The Householder by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1960) is set in New Delhi, India. 

 

Prem, newly arrived in New Delhi, is a poorly-paid Hindi teacher at a local college and his wife Indu is pregnant. Prem has recently become a householder and finds these responsibilities challenging. He wants to ask his landlady Mrs. Seigal for a reduction in rent but is afraid to do so. 

 

Prem befriends a German boy, Hans Loewe, wearing the traditional lederhosen – leather shorts – who rents a room from his landlady Kitty in ‘the best part of New Delhi’ where he is studying to reach ‘the spiritual greatness of the Indian yogis.’ Prem is a little envious. Then he sees his room that: ‘It was the untidiest room Prem had ever seen.’

 

Prem’s mother comes to visit and although he is happy about that, ‘the atmosphere in his small flat became rather strained’ and his wife retires to bed earlier and earlier. His mother is not impressed and offers to stay with him permanently to look after the household. He wondered what it would be like to live with her again, being ‘looked after by his mother and with no responsibilities … Yet he knew he did not want that at all.’ Besides, his sisters need her too. 

 

When Prem visits his landlady, he realizes that her life is not as happy as he had imagined and feels sorry for her: ‘How little one knows of other’s sorrows, he thought.’ Everything was an illusion. Was his life an illusion too? Perhaps his own life wasn’t as bad as he had imagined. Everyone has worries.   

 

Yes, everyone has worries. While Prem aspires to be like the European people of privilege, they too have their worries. This is a comedic, well-written view of a slice of life in New Delhi in the late 1950s by German-born British-American Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1927-2013) who married an Indian architect in 1951 and moved to New Delhi. She is the only person – male or female – to win the Man Booker Prize for literature (for Heat and Dust in 1975) and two Oscars (for best adapted screenplay of E. M. Forster’s 1908 novel A Room with a View in 1986 and E. M. Forster’s 1910 novel Howard’s End in 1992). She was nominated for a third Oscar and won many other literary awards. She died in her home in New York at the age of 85. 









  

MARTINA NICOLLS

MartinaNicollsWebsite  I  Rainy Day Healing  I  Martinasblogs  I  Publications  I  Facebook  I  Paris Website  I  Paris blogs  I  Animal Website  I  Flower Website I Global Gentlemanliness

SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES 

 

Martina Nicolls is an Australian author and international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, and foreign aid audits and evaluations. She lives in Paris.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh  (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. ...
1 comment
Read more

Sister cities discussed: Canberra and Islamabad

Two months ago, in March 2015, Australia and Pakistan agreed to explore ways to deepen ties. The relationship between Australia and Pakistan has been strong for decades, and the two countries continue to keep dialogues open. The annual bilateral discussions were held in Australia in March to continue engagements on a wide range of matters of mutual interest. The Pakistan delegation discussed points of interest will include sports, agriculture, economic growth, trade, border protection, business, and education. The possible twinning of the cities of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, were also on the agenda (i.e. called twin towns or sister cities). Sister City relationships are twinning arrangements that build friendships as well as government, business, culture, and community linkages. Canberra currently has international Sister City relationships with Beijing in China and Nara in Japan. One example of existing...
1 comment
Read more

The acacia thorn trees of Kenya

There are nearly 800 species of acacia trees in the world, and most don’t have thorns. The famous "whistling thorn tree" and the Umbrella Thorn tree of Kenya are species of acacia that do have thorns, or spines. Giraffes and other herbivores normally eat thorny acacia foliage, but leave the whistling thorn alone. Usually spines are no deterrent to giraffes. Their long tongues are adapted to strip the leaves from the branches despite the thorns. The thorny acacia like dry and hot conditions. The thorns typically occur in pairs and are 5-8 centimetres (2-3 inches) long. Spines can be straight or curved depending on the species. MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Suda...
Post a Comment
Read more