Born in 1915 in pre-partition Punjab, Khushwant Singh, perhaps India’s most widely read and controversial writer, has been witness to all the major events in modern Indian history – from Independence and Partition to the Emergency and Operation Blue Star – and has known many of the figures who have shaped it. With clarity and candour, he writes of leaders like Nehru and Indira Gandhi, the terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the talented and scandalous painter Amrita Shergil, and everyday people who became butchers during Partition. Writing of his own life, too, he remains unflinchingly forthright. He records his professional triumphs and failures as a lawyer, journalist, writer and Member of parliament; the comforts and disappointments in his marriage of over sixty years; his first, awakward sexual encounter; his phobia of ghosts and his fascination with death; the friends who betrayed him, and also those whom he failed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Khushwant Singh
Khushwant Singh was born in 1915 in Hadali, Punjab. After university education in Lahore and London, he practiced at the Lahore High court before joining the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. He began a distinguished career as a journalist with all India Radio in 1951. Since then he has been founder-editor of Yojana, editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India and the Hindustan Times and chief editor of New Delhi. Today he is India’s best known columnist. Khushwant Singh has also had an extremely successful career as a writer. His published works include the classic two-volume A History of the Sikhs, the novels Train to Pakistan, Delhi and The Company of Women, his autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice, and a number of translated works and non-fiction books on Delhi, nature, Sikh history and religion, and current affairs. Khushwant Singh was Member of Parliament from 1980 to 1986. Among other honours he was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974 by the President of India (he returned the decoration in 1984 in protest against the Union Government’s siege of the Golden Temple, Amritsar).
There are no reviews yet.