Dec 22, 2009
Heat and Dust | Heat and Dust
At a glance:
- Author: Ruth Prawer
- First Published: 1975
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Romance
- Time of Work: The 1920’s and the 1970’s
- Setting: Satipur, India
- Principal Characters: Olivia Rivers, Douglas Rivers, The Nawab, Harry, The narrator, Inder Lal, Chid
- Genres: Long fiction, Epistolary literature, Philosophical realism
- Subjects: Culture, Freedom, 1970’s, Class conflict, Colonies or colonization, Love or romance, Race, Sex or sexuality, Social issues, Prejudices or antipathies, Social life, 1920’s, Pregnancy, Women’s issues, Adultery, Letter writing, Abortion, India or East Indian people, Gossip, Scandal
- Locales: Satipur, India
Form and Content
Heat and Dust is the story of two English women who traveled to India, about fifty years
apart in time, and recorded their experiences there in letters and journals. The stylistic arrangement
of two parallel stories is creatively handled by means of excerpts from the narrator’s journal
interspersed with the details that she provides from the letters of the now-dead Olivia that she has
in her possession. The reader needs to be alert to the constant shifts between the two tales as they
trace fairly similar developments in the lives of the two women. The...
[The entire page is 1987 words long]
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