1975 Booker Prize

The Booker Prize 1975

Michael Caine presenting Ruth Prawer Jhabvala with the 1975 Booker Prize

Another year of controversy when after working their way through the 83 novels submitted the unimpressed judges decided that only two of them were worthy of shortlisting.

After Angus Wilson and his panel had dismissed 81 by now severely disgruntled novelists the two left standing were Ruth Prawer Jhabvala with Heat and Dust and Thomas Keneally with Gossip From the Forest: Jhabvala won.

By then the German-born Anglo-American Jhabvala had already started writing screenplays for the celebrated filmmaking duo of James Merchant and Ismail Ivory and she holds the distinction of being the only Booker Prize winner also to have won an Oscar. 
 

By
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Published by
John Murray
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala skilfully weaves two parallel stories set in India, one in the present and the other in the days of British rule.

The shortlist

Heat and Dust
Prize winner
Gossip from the Forest

The 1975 judges