Howards End screenwriter Jhabvala dies OSCAR-WINNING screenwriter and award-winning novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has died. She was 85. Firoza Jhabvala said on Wednesday that her mother died in New York after a long illness. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was a longtime member of Merchant Ivory Productions, writing 22 films over four decades. She won two Academy Awards for her adaptations of the EM Forster novels Howards End and A Room With a View. She also was nominated for the screenplay for 1993's The Remains of the Day. Jhabvala was also recognised for her fiction, receiving Britain's highest literary honour for her 1975 novel, Heat and Dust. Jhabvala is survived by Firoza Jhabvala and two other daughters, her husband Cyrus Jhabvala, and six grandchildren.