99: Unforgettable Fiction, Non Fiction, Poetry & Humour By: Khushwant Singh

99: Unforgettable Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry & Humour

• Author : Khushwant Singh
• Publisher : Aleph Book Company
• ISBN-13 : 9789383064755

About 99: Unforgettable Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry & Humour

99 collects in a single volume the finest pieces Khushwant Singh published over the course of a long and prodigiously creative life. The essays, extracts, stories and poems (one for each year of his life) have been chosen for their excellence or because they represent an aspect of the author’s versatility and range. Some of the selections are well known. Others have never been published in book form. The book is divided into fifteen sections and showcases his exceptional achievement as a writer. Family Matters contains extracts from his autobiography and some personal narratives; My Beloved Country has some extraordinary writing about India; The Sikhs comprises excerpts from his books A History of the Sikhs and Ranjit Singh, and essays on the community and translations of the Sikh hymns; The Uses and Abuses of Religion features his articles on the dangers of communalism, and a sublime meditation on religion; Khushwant Singh’s accounts of Pakistan and Pakistanis (including one of the most dazzling examples of journalism in our time, ‘The Hanging of Bhutto’) are included in Passage to Pakistan; he wrote interestingly about famous people all his life, and twelve of his profiles feature in Singular People; a self-taught naturalist, he was passionate about the world of nature—The Ferocity & Flamboyance of Nature has writings on this theme; All About Sex contains some entertaining ruminations on sex, one of the subjects that he was most associated with in the popular imagination. As with sex, so with humour—a few of his funniest jokes find a place in A Merry Heart. Enthusiasms, Rants & Soliloquies has a fair representation of his electrifying polemics on a variety of subjects. A wise and honest man, his most insightful pieces on life, dealing with adversity, ageing and death find a place in How to Live, How to Die. As a novelist, he was superlative—selections from the six novels he published are to be found in The Novels; Portrait of a Lady and Other Stories features the eponymous story along with a few others; a great admirer of writers in Urdu, Punjabi and Hindi, he translated many of their works, some of which can be found in Exchange of Lunatics: Fiction in Translation and A Passion for Poetry. Published on the anniversary of Khushwant Singh’s birth, this is the definitive anthology of the work of one of our greatest and most entertaining writers—it will offer the reader page after page of thought-provoking pleasure.

About the Author

Born in Punjab’s Hadali village (now in Pakistan) in 1915, Khushwant Singh was among India’s best-known and most widely read authors and journalists. He was founder-editor of Yojana, and editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India, National Herald and the Hindustan Times. He published six novels – Train to Pakistan, I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, Delhi, The Company of Women, Burial at Sea and The Sunset Club as well as several books of short stories which were published together as The Portrait of a Lady. His other books are the two-volume A History of the Sikhs; an autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice; a biography, Ranjit Singh: Maharaja of Punjab; and a book of non-fiction, The Return of Indira Gandhi. In addition, he published translations of Hindi and Urdu novels, short stories and poetry, notably Umrao Jan Ada by Mirza Hadi Ruswa, Rajinder Singh Bedi’s I Take This Woman and Iqbal’s Shikwa and Jawab-e-Shikwa. Enterprising publishers also put out dozens of anthologies of his journalism, columns and jokes – at one time there were nearly one hundred of these in print. Khushwant Singh was a member of the Rajya Sabha from 1980 to 1986. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974; he returned the award in 1984 to protest the siege of the Golden Temple by the Indian Army. In 2007, he was awarded India’s second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan. Khushwant Singh died on 20 March 2014. He is survived by his daughter, Mala Dayal, granddaughter, Naina Dayal, and his son, Rahul Singh.

Book Details