Truth, Love & a Little Malice: An Autobiography

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Viking, 2002 - Biography & Autobiography - 423 pages
Read Khushwant Singh's interview done exclusively for Penguin India about his Autobiography...Khushwant Singh has always been worth listening to. In a career spanning over five decades as writer, journalist and editor, his views have been provocative and controversial, but they have also been profound, deeply perceptive and always compelling. Above all, despite his eminence and popularity, Khushwant Singh has never been less than honest and, most importantly, has never talked down to his readers. His autobiography is of a piece with his life and work. Born in 1915 in pre-Partition Punjab, Khushwant Singh has been witness to most of 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. He writes of leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, the terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the talented and scandalous painter Amrita Shergil, and everyday people who became butchers during Partition, with the clarity and candour expected of him. Writing of his own life, too, Khushwant Singh remains unflinchingly forthright. writer and Member of Parliament; the comforts and disappointments in his marriage of over sixty years; his first, awkward sexual encounter; his phobia of ghosts and his fascination with death; the friends who betrayed him, and also those whom he failed. Uncompromising, comic, often moving and always hugely readable, Truth, Love and a Little Malice is a memoir worthy of one of the great icons of our time. The author, Khushwant Singh, was born in 1915 in Hadali, Punjab. He was educated at Government College, Lahore and at King's College and the Inner Temple in London. He practised at the Lahore High Court for several years before joining the Indian Ministry of External Affairs in 1947. He was sent on diplomatic postings to Canada and London and later went to Paris with UNESCO. 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, the National Herald and The Hindustan Times. Today he is India's best-known columnist and journalist. Among his published works are the classic two-volume A History of the Sikhs, several works of fiction--including the novels Train to Pakistan (winner of the Grove Press Award for the best work of fiction in 1954), I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, Delhi and The Company of Women--and a number of translated works and non-fiction books on Delhi, nature and current affairs. Khushwant Singh was a 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).

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Contents

Prologue
1
Village in the Desert
3
School Years
11
Copyright

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