The well known fiction and screenplay writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has died in New York aged 85 years. Born in Cologne to Polish Jewish parents, the family moved to Britain in 1939, where she received her education. In 1951 she married an Indian Parsi architect, and spent the next 64 years living in Delhi. Her first novel, To Whom She Will was published in 1955. Eleven more novels and eight collections of short stories would follow, all much acclaimed and most set in India. Her novel titled Heat and Dust, published in 1975, was the Booker Prize winner for that year. The same year she moved to New York, and began working with film makers Merchant and Ivory, as a screen writer, producing 23 screenplays, winning two Oscars for A Room with a View in 1985 and Howards End in 1992. Her last published fiction was My Nine Lives in 2004, although she completed two screenplays after with the last in 2008.