Solid Ivory : Memoirs

The irreverent, brilliant memoirs of the legendary filmmaker James Ivory


In Solid Ivory, the Academy Award–winning filmmaker James Ivory, a partner in the legendary Merchant Ivory Productions and director of A Room with a View, Howards End, Maurice, and The Remains of the Day, tells stories from the remarkable life and career of one of the most influential directors of his time in a carefully crafted mosaic of memories, portraits, and reflections. At times, they touch on his love affairs as he looks back coolly, and with unexpected frankness.


From first meeting his longtime collaborator and life partner Ismail Merchant at the Indian Consulate in New York to winning an Academy Award at eighty-nine for Call Me by Your Name; from seeing his first film at five in Klamath Falls, Oregon, to memories of Satyajit Ray, Federico Fellini, Vanessa Redgrave, George Cukor, Kenneth Clark, Bruce Chatwin, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and Ismail Merchant—Ivory writes with invariable fluency, wit, and perception about what made him who he is and how he made the movies for which he is known and loved.


Solid Ivory, edited by Peter Cameron, is an utterly winning portrait of an extraordinary life told by an unmatched storyteller.