Ruth Prawer Jhabvala died in Manhattan on April 3, 2013, at age 85, from complications of a pulmonary disorder.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala died on April 3, 2013, in Manhattan, New York, at the age of 85. Her death was attributed to complications from a long-standing pulmonary condition. She had lived in New York for many decades while maintaining deep connections to India, where she had spent much of her adult life, and to England, where she was educated.
Her passing marked the end of an extraordinary and singular literary and cinematic career spanning over six decades. Jhabvala was one of the most celebrated screenwriters in cinema history and a distinguished novelist, remembered chiefly for her decades-long creative partnership with director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant, forming the acclaimed Merchant Ivory Productions triumvirate.
Tributes poured in from the literary and film worlds, with obituaries in The Guardian, The New York Times, and other major outlets celebrating her unique ability to write with authority and nuance across three distinct cultures: German-Jewish, English, and Indian. She remains, to date, the only writer to have won both a Booker Prize (for fiction) and two Academy Awards (for screenwriting), an unparalleled dual achievement in the intersecting worlds of literature and film.