My Nine Lives : Chapters of a Possible Past

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a novelist of unequalled insight, grace and emotional power.

My Nine Lives represents a new and fascinating strand in her outstanding canon of work: as she puts it, the 'potentially autobiographical'.

Here she brilliantly explores nine possible lives, in differing cultural contexts.

While each is located in deeply familiar territory: whether in England, India, or America, and often overlaid with that essential Central European family background, each life is born of startlingly different origins and each reveals a different destiny.

Here are nine different answers to the central question: what would happen if I were granted an alternative life?