ABOUT
THE BOOK

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 are “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 Theatre.