Disinheritance: The Rediscovered Stories

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

A story collection by a Booker Prize-winning author drawn from the ample body of work published only in the New Yorker alongside other stories long out of print and out of the public eye

A collection of stories drawn from the ample body of work published only in the New Yorker, alongside a few other stories long out of print and out of the public eye. Ruth Jhabvala began publishing in the New Yorker in 1957 and this collection spans decades. This story collection showcases Jhabvala’s powers of keen observation as she examines the westernization of India’s middle class, the interplay of social and romantic ambition, and the social mores that plague her characters, regardless of their geographical background.

The introduction will be from the lecture Jhabvala gave when awarded the Neil Gunn Prize in Scotland in 1979, a piece titled “Disinheritance” that examines the effects Germany, the UK, India, and New York had on her journey as a writer and how they influenced her buoyant, satiric fiction.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

352 pages, Hardcover

Published November 25, 2025

About the author

Ruth 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.

Reviews

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow; just wow. Seventeen short stories written by Ruth Prawler Jhabvala (1927-2013): winner of both the Booker Prize for her novel, Heat and Dust (1975), and an Oscar in 1983 for the screenwriting adaptation of the same book. These stories are published in chronological order from when they were written, 1957-2011. I found each story to be emotionally moving, introspective, poignant, and witty; reminding me of the short stories of Shirley Jackson.

We experience the lives of the wives, mothers, and daughters living in India. The claustrophobic existence of women who are not able to follow any ambitions beyond marriage and motherhood; where love from a spouse or child is not expected nor is it given; loneliness and aloneness. But there is comradery, humor, and wisdom. We witness what it is like to be an expat in England and America, where the old is in competition with the new.

I have come to appreciate a culture I know little of, and to not be so quick to judge those whose life and experiences may seem different from me, yet are so much like my own.

Please, please, please. Take the time to find this book and give it a slow, thoughtful read.

I would like to thank Counterpoint and Goodreads for the opportunity to read this wonderful literary work.

[Rae Bradshaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Disinheritance is a quietly powerful collection that captures the dislocation and longing of characters caught between cultures, ambitions, and eras. Drawing on her own life as a perpetual outsider, Jhabvala crafts stories that are deceptively simple yet layered with irony and insight, revealing how ordinary gestures can expose deep fractures in identity and belonging. Her prose is spare but piercing, and the rediscovered tales feel both timeless and urgently relevant, reminding readers why she remains one of the most incisive chroniclers of modern displacement.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I liked the first story a lot and liked them less as the book went on. I don’t think it is the book but the short story format I don’t like as much.

[Blythe · Rating 3 out of 5]

A disappointment. Ms. Jhabvala may be a wonderful writer but what a sad and bitter set of stories.

[Firoza]

This book is unique because it spans the writer’s years of development as an author. It follows her through the 4 countries she lived in. It starts with an autobiographical essay which gives us a rare glimpse of her early life in Germany. Each story is a gem reflecting the India and England she saw at a certain time in history. There are stories set in wartime and post-war England that she lived in as a young Jewish refugee and stories from a post-independence India where she moved to as a young wife. Then we move into the American stories about people this remarkable author met and observed in the US where she moved in the 70s. You feel the author’s sympathy for the people you meet in the stories, people who find themselves in difficult situations. Although these stories were written at a certain time in history, the characters and their emotions
remain timeless, drawing the reader into the predicaments they find themselves in. You will not regret buying this book and keeping it in your collection to revisit over the years.