A Life Incomplete

All that sustains Kuldeep Singh through his dark days in jail, where he is serving a term for participating in anti-British agitations, are thoughts of going home to his wife. When he returns, he finds out that his wife has died, leaving behind their infant child. As Kuldeep s world collapses around him, he negotiates the divergent pulls exerted by people around him: a holy man who advocates renunciation; his childhood friend Saroj, who has always loved him; and the tempestuous Prakash who hides an unsavoury past. Sahitya Akademi Award-winning author Nanak Singh draws on personal experiences to create this compelling portrait of Punjab in the 1920s. Originally published in Punjabi in 1940, Adh Kidhiya Phul is an intense meditation on the choices people make and the consequences these may have.

Nanak Singh (1897-1971) is widely regarded as the father of the Punjabi novel. With little formal education beyond the fourth grade, he wrote an astounding fifty-nine books, which included thirty-eight novels and an assortment of plays, short stories, poems, essays and even a set of translations. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1962 for Ik Mian Do Talwaraan. His novel Pavitra Paapi was made into a film in 1968, while Chitta Lahu was translated into the Russian by Natasha Tolstoy. Navdeep Suri is an Indian diplomat who has served in India s diplomatic missions in Cairo, Damascus, Washington, Dar es Salaam and as India s consul general in Johannesburg. He has translated into English the classic 1930s Punjani novel Pavitra Paapi (The Watchmaker) written by his grandfather.