Disinheritance: The Rediscovered Stories

This posthumous story collection by Merchant Ivory scriptwriter Jhabvala (1927–2013), who won the Booker Prize for her novel Heat and Dust, demonstrates the author’s acerbic brilliance and her proclivity to write from the perspectives of other cultures. A German-born Jew who married an Indian architect, Jhabvala lived in India for two decades. In a revealing 1979 lecture, included as an introduction, she attributes the Indian narrators in her work to the “chameleon or cuckoo quality” she inherited from her nomadic family. Among such characters are the mother in “Lekha” who disapproves of a young unhappily married woman’s affair with a handsome musician, and the father in “Sixth Child” who desperately hopes for a son to keep him company amid his family of women. Other stories are narrated by Europeans or Brits, such as “Wedding Preparations,” about an English mother incensed that her daughter’s lover will not marry her after they have a baby. Jhabvala takes deadly aim at gullible western women and the gurus and swamis they fall for in the satisfying “An Intellectual Girl and an Eminent Artiste” and “A Very Special Fate.” Throughout, she offers canny insights into the clash between modernity and tradition. Readers will find plenty to admire. (Nov.)