Heat and Dust / Ruth Prawer Jhabvala 181 p.

This was a re-read by one of my favorite authors, and the title for which she won the Booker.  Prawer Jhabvala has also written many screenplays, particularly for Merchant Ivory.  In 1923 young and pretty Olivia joins her civil servant husband in India, where she quickly grows bored, at least until she meets the Nawab, a regional prince with mysterious and possibly criminal connections.  Fifty years later a distant relative, an unnamed young woman from England, travels to India to 'research' Olivia, now dead, through her remaining letters.

This is a perfectly-constructed, brief novel which works out the author's perennial theme: the ways in which individuals, especially young Westerners, are hypnotized by powerful people and cultures.  Prawer Jhabvala has the insight of a psychologist while using none of the jargon, portraying motives and feelings with a subtle, precise style.