My nine lives : chapters of a possible past / Ruth Prawer Jhabvala ; illustrations by C.S.H. Jhabvala.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer, 1927-2013.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Autobiographical fiction.

India--Social life and customs--Fiction.

India.

Manners and customs.

Authors--Fiction.

Authors.

Genre:

Fiction.

Novels.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

viii, 277 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First Shoemaker and Hoard hardcover edition.

Place of Publication:

Washington, DC : Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004.

Summary:

For her first novel in more than nine years, in a career of distinctive and unique accomplishments, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has written a most unusual book. My Nine Lives is, "Chapters of a Possible Past," as the subtitle declares. It is, as the author has commented, a book filled with "invented memories." Nine vignettes--autobiographical fictions--are linked to portray a rich life, filled with searching, from London to Delhi, from Hollywood to New York. Each chapter gathers a different cast of characters, some new and some vaguely familiar, and the linked assembly is as exciting and illuminating as an artist's first show at a Chelsea gallery or a new play at the Studio Theater. After seventeen books, now in her seventy-seventh year, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala takes on as her subject herself, the life she may have or may have wished to live. My Nine Lives is a moving and intriguing book of invention and memory.

Contents:

Apologia vii

1. Life 3

2. Menage 33

3. Gopis 63

4. Springlake 89

5. A Choice of Heritage 129

6. My Family 153

7. Dancer With a Broken Leg 181

8. Refuge in London 211

9. Pilgrimage 247.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

ISBN:

1593760280

OCLC:

55112966