Nanak Singh

Nanak Singh Ji (4 July 1897 – 28 December 1971), born Hans Raj, was a poet, songwriter and novelist in the Punjabi language. His writing in support of India’s independence movement led the British to arrest him. He published several novels which won him literary acclaim.

Biography

Nanak Singh was the best selling novelist in India for thirty to forty years. He wrote over 50 books including novels and collection of short stories. He made significant contributions to various literary genres. For him character was the determination of incident and incident the illustration of character. His greatest contribution to Punjabi fiction is its secularisation. He depicted excerpts from contemporary life, cloaked with a veil of romantic idealism.Nanak Singh wrote novels while in jail. He wrote over 40,000 pages in long hand Gurmukhi (Punjabi) script. He was recognized with many awards, including Punjab’s highest literary award in 1960. His great historical novel, Ik Mian Do Talwaran (One Sheath and Two Swords, 1959) won him India’s highest literary honour, the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1962.