When Khushwant Singh died at the age of ninety-nine in 2014, he had over a hundred books to his name and was widely regarded as one of India s greatest writers. The hallmarks of his finest work were courage, honesty, style, humour, simplicity and great storytelling. Me, The Jokerman assembles over fifty essays, most of them unpublished in book form, in the categories that he had made his own religion, nature, sex, autobiography, and, above all, humour,simplicity and great Storytellin. Me, The Jokerman assembles over fifty essays, most of them unpublished in book form, in the categories that he had made his won religion, nature, sex, autobiogrphy and above all, humour
Entertaining, insightful as well as laugh-out-loud funny, this is a book that will delight Khushwant Singh s legions of admirers.
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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 Hindustan Times. He published six novels Train to Pakistan, I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, Delhi: A Novel, 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. Among his other books are 99: Unforgettable Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry & Humour, The Freethinker s Prayerbook, A History of the Sikhs; an autobiography, Truth, Love & a Little Malice; a biography, Ranjit Singh: Maharaja of the 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 Mohammad Hadi Ruswa, Rajinder Singh Bedi s I Take This Woman and Iqbal s Shikwa and Jawab-i-Shikwa .
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 died in 2014