At the End of the Century

Multi-layered, subtle, insightful short stories from the inimitable Booker Prize–winning author Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Nobody has written so powerfully of the relationship between and within India and the Western middle classes than Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, herself caught between cultures. In this definitive selection, chosen by her surviving family members, her ability to tenderly and humorously view the all-too-human situations faced by three (sometimes interacting) cultures—European, post-Independence Indian, and American—is never more acute. In "A Course of English Studies," a young woman arrives at Oxford from India and struggles to adapt, not only to the sad, stoic object of her infatuation, but to a country that seems so resistant to passion and color. In the wrenching "Expiation," the blind unconditional love of a cloth shop owner for his wastrel younger brother exposes the sometimes tragic beauty and foolishness of human compassion and faith....