Contents: 1. Village in the Desert. 2. Infancy to adolescence: school years. 3. College years in Delhi and Lahore. 4. Discovering England. 5. Lahore, partition and Independence. 6. With Menon in London, with Malik in Canada. 7. Purging the past and return to India. 8. Parisian interlude. 9. Discovery of India. 10. Sikh religion and history. 11. Bombay, the illustrated weekly of India, 1969-79 and the aftermath. 12. With the Gandhis and the Anands. 13. 1980-86, Parliament and the Hindustan Times. 14. Pakistan. 15. Oddballs and screwballs. 16. Wrestling with the almighty. 17. On writing and writers. 18. The last but One Chapter Postscript: November 2001.
"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. 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, 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." (jacket)
[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, and editor of The Illsutrated Weekly of India, the National Herald and the Hindustan Times. Today he is India’s best-known columnist and journalist.
Khushwant Singh has also had an extremely successful career as a writer. Among his published works are the classic two-volume 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.]
