Heat and Dust

Class Handouts:

Here are the Heat and Dust character family trees.
Some terms from the novel to help understand the Indian/British Colonial context.
This handout is a quote from a blogger's response* to the novel, with room for your responses, too.

Internet Resources:

A good, succinct biography of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, whose story winds from Germany to England to India to the United States, can be found at the Books & Writers site.
A woman named *Fay Sheco keeps a blog called Historical/Present ("books, music, and a little art"), and her personal response to Heat and Dust is worth reading, especially if you're thinking of writing about the novel. It could be a starting point for ideas. She is convinced that the plot and characters are secondary in this novel: "Heat and Dust is one of those novels that defy easy representation. It is about the history of colonial India, the vivid depiction of place and time, and the situational constraints of imperialism upon the governors as well as the governed. Then modern visitors to India try to submerge themselves in the culture but flounder about, engaging in questionable behaviors. The reader is invited to observe, without ready identification with a single character in the story, and still the ambience takes hold."
For some good background on Colonial India and the Raj, the Wikipedia article "British Raj" is a fine place to start. Read the article, remembering that Olivia's events in the novel take place in 1923, although the characters make reference to the "Indian Uprising" and other things in the past.