This German-born writer and her family moved to England in 1939. After her 1951 marriage to architect Cyrus S.H. Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala moved to India and began publishing a series of acclaimed novels, many of which dealt with the culture clash between Indians and the British. She turned screenwriter when the director-producer duo of James Ivory and Ismail Merchant sought her permission to film her novel, "The Householder" (1963). Continuing with the pair, Jhabvala penned other insights into post-Colonialism with "Shakespeare Wallah" (1965), "The Guru" (1969), "Autobiography of a Princess" (1975), and "Heat and Dust" (1983, based on her award-winning 1975 novel).

By the mid-1980s, however, partly in response to the poor box-office performance of several Merchant-Ivory original productions, Jhabvala moved with the duo to a series of intelligent, respectful adaptations of period novels, especially those of E M Forster and Henry James. "The Europeans" (1979) had been an early attempt in this direction, but the trio's first really successful venture into the drawing room was "The Bostonians" (1984). A more lighthearted follow-up, "A Room with a View" (1986), proved popular with critics and public alike, and brought Jhabvala an Oscar for her nicely judged adaptation of Forster's comedy of manners. After adapting two Evan Connell novels into a touching, time-spanning cinema portrait of "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge" (1990), she won a second Oscar for another Forster adaptation, "Howards End" (1992). Jhabvala's talent for creating strong-minded if sometimes eccentric women also found expression in her one non-Merchant-Ivory endeavor, John Schlesinger's quirky "Madame Sousatzka" (1988). She has continued to write period dramas for Merchant-Ivory, including "The Remains of the Day" (1993), "Jefferson in Paris" (1995), and "The Golden Bowl" (2000).

Next for Jhabvala and her collaborators was a sophisticated, unpretentious adaptation of Diane Johnson's bestselling novel "Le Divorce" (2003), a relaxed, sophisticated and contemporary tale of two American sisters in Paris: one a pregnant expatriated poetess (Naomi Watts) suddenly abandoned by her philandering French husband; the other a fresh, naive young woman (Kate Hudson) caught up in a seemingly cosmopolitan affair with a roguish, married and much older French diplomat.