Jhabvala, 85, breathed her last at her home in Manhattan after a long illness. She has a long association with Merchant Ivory Productions, which yielded her two Academy Awards for her work on the films A Room with a View and Howards End.
India was the inspiration for many of her stories, including Heat and Dust, which won her the Booker in 1975.
Jhabvala wrote 19 novels and short-story collections that reflected the cultures she absorbed on three continents during her half-century career. She became a British citizen in 1948.
In 1951, she married Cyrus H Jhabvala, an Indian Parsi architect.
Image: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala receives a British Academy film fellowship at a ceremony in central London, February 24, 2002 | Photograph:Michael Crabtree/Reuters
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