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A Lovesong for India: Tales from the East and West
In this expansive story collection, acclaimed writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala continues her lifelong meditation on East and West. Set in India, England, and New York City, A Lovesong for India reveals what unites us across oceans, cultures, and lifetimes.
In “Innocence,” an older couple, whose social standing is marred from a decades-old scandal, rent out rooms in their Delhi home for both companionship and income. Isolated and battling blame and guilt, the couple becomes deeply invested in the lives of their two tenants. With the addition of a third renter—a beautiful and provocative woman from India—tensions in the household push the story to its feverish conclusion.
The story “Talent” finds Jhabvala in New York City reflecting on the friction between family and societal expectations. Magda is a talent scout whose entire life is her work until she meets Ellie, a singer whose immense ability and unguarded personality captivate Magda. Soon Ellie is integrated into Magda’s extended family for better or worse.
Remarkable and unwavering, this collection is the hallmark of Jhabvala’s celebrated career and a testament to her “balance, subtlety, wry humor, and beauty” —The New York Times.
In “Innocence,” an older couple, whose social standing is marred from a decades-old scandal, rent out rooms in their Delhi home for both companionship and income. Isolated and battling blame and guilt, the couple becomes deeply invested in the lives of their two tenants. With the addition of a third renter—a beautiful and provocative woman from India—tensions in the household push the story to its feverish conclusion.
The story “Talent” finds Jhabvala in New York City reflecting on the friction between family and societal expectations. Magda is a talent scout whose entire life is her work until she meets Ellie, a singer whose immense ability and unguarded personality captivate Magda. Soon Ellie is integrated into Magda’s extended family for better or worse.
Remarkable and unwavering, this collection is the hallmark of Jhabvala’s celebrated career and a testament to her “balance, subtlety, wry humor, and beauty” —The New York Times.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2011
21 people are currently reading
207 people want to read
About the author
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
57 books184 followersRuth Prawer Jhabvala was a British and American novelist and screenwriter. She is best known for her collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of film director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant.
In 1951, she married Indian architect Cyrus Jhabvala and moved to New Delhi. She began then to elaborate her experiences in India and wrote novels and tales on Indian subjects. She wrote a dozen novels, 23 screenplays, and eight collections of short stories and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Diplomatic Service and Overseas List of the 1998 New Years Honours and granted a joint fellowship by BAFTA in 2002 with Ivory and Merchant. She is the only person to have won both a Booker Prize and an Oscar.
In 1951, she married Indian architect Cyrus Jhabvala and moved to New Delhi. She began then to elaborate her experiences in India and wrote novels and tales on Indian subjects. She wrote a dozen novels, 23 screenplays, and eight collections of short stories and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Diplomatic Service and Overseas List of the 1998 New Years Honours and granted a joint fellowship by BAFTA in 2002 with Ivory and Merchant. She is the only person to have won both a Booker Prize and an Oscar.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 20, 2012
“A Love Song for India” is one of those wonderful books of short stories from a writer who has been perfecting the art for a lifetime. Like Mavis Gallant and William Trevor, you get the impression that Ruth Prawer Jhabvala sits down at her kitchen table in the morning, only to rise an hour later with a perfect, polished gem of a story. Suspended by the tension between east and west, settings vary from India, to London, to New York, each place inhabited by characters in whom conflict boils until it can be contained no longer. Said to be ‘autobiographical fiction,’ these stories are a departure from previous, more theoretically abstract collections and amongst Jhabvala’s best.
April 28, 2019
Whilst I generally prefer Indian writers writing about India, I also enjoy Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s semi-outsider view of Indian life. Although she was born German to Polish parents, she moved to England and then married an Indian – architect CSH Jhabvala – and together they spent many years living in India. She now splits her days between New York, London and Delhi and 'A Lovesong for India' reflects that complexity in her own life.
The book is actually called 'A Lovesong for India – Tales from East and West' and I was a little disappointed not to get more stories set in India. I enjoyed the others but I would have liked more Indian stories. A Lovesong for India contains eleven short stories, none of which are linked to one another. The first four are set in India, the next four are all on a theme the author calls ‘Mostly Arts and Entertainment’ and the final three are ‘The Last Decades’. There are no ‘duds’ amongst these eleven offerings but some are more memorable than others.
The Indian stories kick off with ‘Innocence’, a story in which the narrator is a young European woman living as a paying guest in the home of an Indian couple who have fallen on hard times. We gradually learn about the shame that brought down the landlord and landlady and how it has impacted on their lives and left them feeling unworthy.
Next is the story that gives the book its title – ‘A Lovesong for India’. This is a beautiful tale of a couple – he Indian, she English – and their enduring love which keeps them safe and together when their son makes serious mistakes that might have broken the family apart.
‘Bombay (pre-Mumbai)’ is the story of a beautiful girl who almost accidentally marries the son of a very wealthy and famous Bollywood actor. This is a story of a family falling apart as the daughter-in-law starts to take the role of hostess for her father-in-law. It’s an eerie but fascinating tale.
The final story set in India is called ‘School of Oriental Studies’ and examines two women, one a rather mousy professor from an American university called Maria and the other, Anuradha, a larger than life Indian poetess. Maria wants to translate Anuradha’s poems but gets lured into Anuradha’s family politics when the poetess drags her into a complex plot to send her son away to America to avoid an unsuitable attachment to the wrong sort of girl and subsequently changes her mind.
Mostly Arts and Entertainment is a section of stories set in the USA. ‘Talent’ is the story of Magda, the artists’ agent and Ellie, the manipulative ‘talent’. When Magda introduces Ellie to her cousin Robert, she has no idea that Ellie will play the two of them off against each other and will become obsessed with Robert.
‘Critic’ tells of a film critic called Theodore who writes a cutting review of a film starring an actress called Patty Pope who then tries to influence him into writing a script for her. We’re left wondering what she’s REALLY after and whether it’s all a complex revenge plot.
‘The New Messiah’ is the story of Rita and Kris (short for Krishna), an Indian brother and sister living in London. When Rita’s employer Nathan becomes obsessed with her brother and wants him to star in his big blockbuster film, Rita knows that no good can come of it.
‘Pagans’ tells of two sisters, Brigitte and Frances, and Brigitte’s young Indian protégé Shoki who wants to write screenplays. Unbeknownst to Frances, there are plenty of reasons why her husband Marshall disapproves of Brigitte’s relationship with Shoki.
The stories in the section called ‘The Last Decades’ are about death and ageing. ‘Death of an English Hero’ is a wistful story about a man who is found dead in an out of the way Indian border town leading his mother to discover that her son – who we presume to have been some sort of spy – had both an American wife and an Indian mistress of whom she knew nothing.
‘The Teacher’ is about an Indian ‘guru’ called Dr Chacko who is adopted by a group of New Yorkers who believe he can show them the way to enlightenment. He moves into the narrator’s cottage in her garden and a friendship develops despite her lack of interest in or understanding of his philosophy.
The final short story ‘At the End of the Century’ was my favourite of them all. It tells of two half-sisters, Celia and Lily and of Lily’s marriage to a beautiful young man called Gavin. It’s an extraordinary and deeply unconventional love story with plenty of twists and turns and was the story with lingered longest in my mind. It hints at much without explicitly stating the facts. Lily gets pregnant by a homeless African man she meets under a bridge and the family together set out to bring him up.
RPJ writes beautifully about interactions between people of different classes and castes, about manners and morality and it doesn’t matter whether her protagonists are Indian, English, American or from the moon because the themes remain very similar. She writes about people tortured by politeness and trying to ‘do the right thing’, about those unable to address the elephants in the room, edging delicately around them to avoid conflict. If Jane Austen had been born in the 20th Century, she’d have found her match in Prawer Jhabvala and her drawing-room discussions of the right way to behave.
There is timelessness about many of the stories and it’s hard to place many of them in space and time whilst others are quite precisely placed. In one story a young man dies of a horrible disease and all the signposts of AIDS are there for those who want to spot them but can be easily missed by others. She covers a range of social classes from the down at heel landlords of ‘Innocence’ to the Bollywood glamour of ‘Bombay (before Mumbai)’. Her characters are often sweet, frequently gullible and too often surrounded by people who are devious and manipulative. Each of the eleven stories leaves its mark on the reader but there are few parallels to be drawn between the events of the different tales.
Whilst I liked each story individually and enjoyed those set in the west as much as the eastern ones, I remain unconvinced that they knit together as a whole. There are no clear themes to tie them all together and I couldn’t help feeling that RPJ had perhaps had a bunch of short stories knocking around and decided to shove them all together to make a book. They are each exquisitely observed little slices of lives but when put together they don’t entirely gel. I always think a good book of short stories should be like a box of expensive chocolates, each delicious in their own right but somehow adding up to more than the sum of their parts. However, in this case, each is indeed delicious but the flavours don’t go together well. It’s less like a box of chocolates and more like a box containing dainty chocolates and beautifully presented sushi all put into the same wrapper.
The book is actually called 'A Lovesong for India – Tales from East and West' and I was a little disappointed not to get more stories set in India. I enjoyed the others but I would have liked more Indian stories. A Lovesong for India contains eleven short stories, none of which are linked to one another. The first four are set in India, the next four are all on a theme the author calls ‘Mostly Arts and Entertainment’ and the final three are ‘The Last Decades’. There are no ‘duds’ amongst these eleven offerings but some are more memorable than others.
The Indian stories kick off with ‘Innocence’, a story in which the narrator is a young European woman living as a paying guest in the home of an Indian couple who have fallen on hard times. We gradually learn about the shame that brought down the landlord and landlady and how it has impacted on their lives and left them feeling unworthy.
Next is the story that gives the book its title – ‘A Lovesong for India’. This is a beautiful tale of a couple – he Indian, she English – and their enduring love which keeps them safe and together when their son makes serious mistakes that might have broken the family apart.
‘Bombay (pre-Mumbai)’ is the story of a beautiful girl who almost accidentally marries the son of a very wealthy and famous Bollywood actor. This is a story of a family falling apart as the daughter-in-law starts to take the role of hostess for her father-in-law. It’s an eerie but fascinating tale.
The final story set in India is called ‘School of Oriental Studies’ and examines two women, one a rather mousy professor from an American university called Maria and the other, Anuradha, a larger than life Indian poetess. Maria wants to translate Anuradha’s poems but gets lured into Anuradha’s family politics when the poetess drags her into a complex plot to send her son away to America to avoid an unsuitable attachment to the wrong sort of girl and subsequently changes her mind.
Mostly Arts and Entertainment is a section of stories set in the USA. ‘Talent’ is the story of Magda, the artists’ agent and Ellie, the manipulative ‘talent’. When Magda introduces Ellie to her cousin Robert, she has no idea that Ellie will play the two of them off against each other and will become obsessed with Robert.
‘Critic’ tells of a film critic called Theodore who writes a cutting review of a film starring an actress called Patty Pope who then tries to influence him into writing a script for her. We’re left wondering what she’s REALLY after and whether it’s all a complex revenge plot.
‘The New Messiah’ is the story of Rita and Kris (short for Krishna), an Indian brother and sister living in London. When Rita’s employer Nathan becomes obsessed with her brother and wants him to star in his big blockbuster film, Rita knows that no good can come of it.
‘Pagans’ tells of two sisters, Brigitte and Frances, and Brigitte’s young Indian protégé Shoki who wants to write screenplays. Unbeknownst to Frances, there are plenty of reasons why her husband Marshall disapproves of Brigitte’s relationship with Shoki.
The stories in the section called ‘The Last Decades’ are about death and ageing. ‘Death of an English Hero’ is a wistful story about a man who is found dead in an out of the way Indian border town leading his mother to discover that her son – who we presume to have been some sort of spy – had both an American wife and an Indian mistress of whom she knew nothing.
‘The Teacher’ is about an Indian ‘guru’ called Dr Chacko who is adopted by a group of New Yorkers who believe he can show them the way to enlightenment. He moves into the narrator’s cottage in her garden and a friendship develops despite her lack of interest in or understanding of his philosophy.
The final short story ‘At the End of the Century’ was my favourite of them all. It tells of two half-sisters, Celia and Lily and of Lily’s marriage to a beautiful young man called Gavin. It’s an extraordinary and deeply unconventional love story with plenty of twists and turns and was the story with lingered longest in my mind. It hints at much without explicitly stating the facts. Lily gets pregnant by a homeless African man she meets under a bridge and the family together set out to bring him up.
RPJ writes beautifully about interactions between people of different classes and castes, about manners and morality and it doesn’t matter whether her protagonists are Indian, English, American or from the moon because the themes remain very similar. She writes about people tortured by politeness and trying to ‘do the right thing’, about those unable to address the elephants in the room, edging delicately around them to avoid conflict. If Jane Austen had been born in the 20th Century, she’d have found her match in Prawer Jhabvala and her drawing-room discussions of the right way to behave.
There is timelessness about many of the stories and it’s hard to place many of them in space and time whilst others are quite precisely placed. In one story a young man dies of a horrible disease and all the signposts of AIDS are there for those who want to spot them but can be easily missed by others. She covers a range of social classes from the down at heel landlords of ‘Innocence’ to the Bollywood glamour of ‘Bombay (before Mumbai)’. Her characters are often sweet, frequently gullible and too often surrounded by people who are devious and manipulative. Each of the eleven stories leaves its mark on the reader but there are few parallels to be drawn between the events of the different tales.
Whilst I liked each story individually and enjoyed those set in the west as much as the eastern ones, I remain unconvinced that they knit together as a whole. There are no clear themes to tie them all together and I couldn’t help feeling that RPJ had perhaps had a bunch of short stories knocking around and decided to shove them all together to make a book. They are each exquisitely observed little slices of lives but when put together they don’t entirely gel. I always think a good book of short stories should be like a box of expensive chocolates, each delicious in their own right but somehow adding up to more than the sum of their parts. However, in this case, each is indeed delicious but the flavours don’t go together well. It’s less like a box of chocolates and more like a box containing dainty chocolates and beautifully presented sushi all put into the same wrapper.
September 30, 2018
I picked this book up in the Carlton Library - it called to me when I was homesick in a new world - A lovesong for India - that is what my heart was singing.
When I started this collection of short stories, I felt like this was the book equivalent of those movies made by American-Born Confused Desis where they went back to their roots in India only to find that they did not belong completely to either world. I felt the stories were precious and predictable.
Then something interesting happened - I went on reading and a different theme began to emerge - there were Indians in these stories but there were also Americans, Englishmen, even Russians.
Their Indianness was not what tied these stories together - the stories were about vampires. People who completely and utterly preyed on other people, on their compassion, their love and their generosity. The complete and utter subjugation of one human being by another.
In this, the stories were alike and their writing was uniquely claustrophobic. The stories were set as far afield as London and Los Angeles but they remained about themes of love, loss, selfishness, sexuality, obsession and of course, a feeling of being adrift in the world without anything to hold onto.
I found Prawer Jhabvala's writing astonishing and enjoyed this book. The book found me at a time when I needed it in my life and so I believe books are magic, in a way.
When I started this collection of short stories, I felt like this was the book equivalent of those movies made by American-Born Confused Desis where they went back to their roots in India only to find that they did not belong completely to either world. I felt the stories were precious and predictable.
Then something interesting happened - I went on reading and a different theme began to emerge - there were Indians in these stories but there were also Americans, Englishmen, even Russians.
Their Indianness was not what tied these stories together - the stories were about vampires. People who completely and utterly preyed on other people, on their compassion, their love and their generosity. The complete and utter subjugation of one human being by another.
In this, the stories were alike and their writing was uniquely claustrophobic. The stories were set as far afield as London and Los Angeles but they remained about themes of love, loss, selfishness, sexuality, obsession and of course, a feeling of being adrift in the world without anything to hold onto.
I found Prawer Jhabvala's writing astonishing and enjoyed this book. The book found me at a time when I needed it in my life and so I believe books are magic, in a way.
November 7, 2017
3.0
Disappointing, as to quality of the writing, and content --- the setting of the stories is mostly outside India and the characters almost all non-Indians.
Very few writers do excellent short stories, it seems.
Disappointing, as to quality of the writing, and content --- the setting of the stories is mostly outside India and the characters almost all non-Indians.
Very few writers do excellent short stories, it seems.
April 18, 2013
I've read Ruthe Prawer Jhabvala's books previously,Esmond in India, and The Nature of Passion, and found this collection of short stories just as enjoyable.
May 18, 2025
This book is a very interesting series of short stories, some set in India, some in the US or England. I’m not sure what I was expecting from this author - I knew her name but I’m not sure I’ve read anything by her - but this group of stories were different. They weren’t glowing in praise for East or West but just seemed very straight-forward about life within the circumstances of the story. The Indian characters seem very enigmatic and - dare I say it? - inscrutable whereas the Western characters seem more familiar, of course, because I am Western and have never been to India. The writing is solid and smooth, which sounds like a weird combination, but I mean it is practiced and flows smoothly. The characters in each story seem whole unto themselves. Some stories speak in the first person, others in the third but each seems right for its own tale.
August 10, 2019
I expected this book to be about Indians and the Indian diaspora, not white westerners/non-Indians. The book had hints of orientalism throughout which perturbed me as well, so I did not finish. It was well-written though.
August 17, 2023
Absolute hogwash of a book. A series of stories that make sense only if you're drunk when reading as they're completely haywire and the each story is unconnected with its characters something between a travelogue and memoirs of an old biddy.
February 27, 2019
Het gros van de verhalen gaan helemaal niet over India. Het niveau van kasteelromannetjes bijna niet door te komen. Absoluut geen aanrader.
September 27, 2013
Book of short stories, some set in India, some in America, but all having some tie to India no matter how small.
I thought it was just meh. A lot of the stories just felt pointless to me (although well-written). In general, they were about relationships and the connections and disconnections between people. Communication issues, personality clashes and flaws, etc. I know I'm being vague, but that's because honestly I couldn't really tell what the author was going for with some of the stories.
I thought it was just meh. A lot of the stories just felt pointless to me (although well-written). In general, they were about relationships and the connections and disconnections between people. Communication issues, personality clashes and flaws, etc. I know I'm being vague, but that's because honestly I couldn't really tell what the author was going for with some of the stories.
August 12, 2014
Prawer Jhabvala has written an interesting and sometimes humorous collection of stories of restless often rootless people. Settings include both her home countries of the US and India. Even for a person who normally doesn’t choose short stories, I found them interesting. The stories are often open-ended, which I find frustrating, but in the end this allows the reader to participate in the writing by imagining the ending as they want.
February 24, 2012
I'm on a big India kick, so I was a little disappointed to find that not all of these stories are set in India. They are all, however, really good. The first story, "Innocence," was one of my favorites -- dramatic without veering into melodrama. I'll definitely be seeking out more of Jhabvala's work.
July 4, 2013
Though I put this book on my "India" shelf, most of these stories take place in the U.S. or England. These are not my favorites of this wonderful writer's stories. They inhabit a world of odd characters, drifting through their lives in a lethargic, sad (though not tragic) way. The stories seem to ask a question I couldn't pin down, and never found answered.
November 23, 2016
I liked the stories about India at the beginning of this collection, but I hated all of the characters in the subsequent stories about New York City, Los Angeles, and London. They were all crazy, but not in ways that were interesting to me. The writing is intoxicating and kept me reading, but the plots were disturbing.
June 10, 2014
Thankfully I finished this was not her best work.I love her earlier anthologies these stories however were drab and rambling. "The Talent" and "A Lovesong for India" were the only two which stood out!
March 22, 2013
POST best books 2012 list - short stories about modern India. I tried this but lost interest. TMI - too much India. Didn't finish.
June 15, 2015
These short stories were set in India, England and the U.S.A. The stories focused on unusual relationships between people. I enjoyed Jhabvala's subtle humor and social criticism.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews