Oscar Winner Dies: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s 5 Best Works

Oscar winner Ruth Prawer Jhabvala died in New York on Wednesday after a long illness. She was 85. As a screenwriter, she was a crucial piece of the three-man Merchant Ivory Productions -- together with producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory -- a team which became known for films that were "lush and literate [and] often adapted from classic novels," as the New York Times wrote. Over four decades, the production team produced 22 films together.

Born to Jewish parents in 1927 in Cologne, Germany, she and the whole of her extended family fled from the Nazis in 1939. Some went to Holland, others to Palestine, others to America or France, while she ended up in England, according to the Telegraph. In 1948, when her father discovered that 40 members of his family who opted for Holland had been killed in the Holocaust, he committed suicide. She was said to have rejected German culture and embraced the English language, the language in which she composed all of her works. While at university, she met the man who was to become husband, Cyrus Jhabvala, a young Indian architect. The two of them lived for several decades in India -- the setting of much of her fiction -- before moving to New York later in life.

1. "A Room With A View"

This won Jhabvala the first of her Oscars, for Best Adapted Screenplay, in 1985. Based on the 1908 E.M. Forster novel, it's a story of romance and repression in Edwardian-era England.

2. "Howards End"

This 1992 film netted her her second Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, and was adapted from another novel by E.M. Forster of the same name.

3. "Heat and Dust"

This 1975 novel won the Booker Prize, Britain's highest literary honor. Jhabvala also gained renown as a writer of fiction, which she continued to write after she became famous for her screenwriting. Her 12th novel, "My Nine Lives" came out 2004, and she published five collections of short stories. In a 1993 interview with the LA Times, she said she spent her days writing, from 10am to 1pm.

"I told my daughter once," she said then, "after 1 o'clock you might as well bury me and take me out again the next day."

4. "The Householder"

The first film to be produced by the Merchant Ivory Productions outfit, released in 1963, it was based on Jhibvala's novel, and narrates the breakdown and subsequent rebuilding of an arranged marriage. It was filmed entirely on location in Delhi.

5. "Surviving Picasso"

Released in 1995, this film starring Anthony Hopkins famously ran afoul of the Picasso estate in its depicting of Françoise Gilot's relationship with Pablo Picasso. Because they were forbidden from showing the painter's work in the film, the creators had to shoot around it, keeping the paintings only in the camera's peripheral.

She is survived by her husband, three daughters, and six grandchildren.