London's famous Foyles bookshop will host the launch of the late Sahitya Akademi award winner Nanak Singh's work Saintly Sinner, (Pavitra Paapi).
The launch on October 16 marks the long overdue recognition abroad of Singh's importance as one of north India's top writers and author of more than 50 books.
Pavitra Paapi was one of his best-known works, and it was turned into a screen success with Balraj Sahni.
The twist in the tale of Pavitra Paapi is that its translator is Singh's grandson. Navdeep Suri also happens to be an erudite and popular press counsellor at the Indian high commission in London.
Preparing for its English language debut has been a labour of love for both Suri and his wife Mani, who has designed the dust cover.
Suri was only 12 when Singh died in 1971, shortly after the end of the India-Pakistan war.
But the diplomat still has clear memories of his famous and respected grandfather, who took him along to Rashtrapati Bhavan when he received his 1962 Sahitya Akademi award from then President Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.
Singh was in his early 20s when he wrote his first best-selling work, a book of hymns in praise of Sikh gurus.
But the key moment in his life was the Jalianwala Bagh massacre when around 400 civilians were gunned down on the orders of British Brigadier General Reginald Dyer.
Says Suri, "He had gone there (Jalianwala Bagh) with three of his friends; two them died and he himself, according to his testimony, fell unconscious and piled up among the dead bodies.
"From there he walked away and wrote this fiery book, Khoony Vaisakhi, which was right after the Jalianwala Bagh massacre. It poked fun at the British, asking if this was their democracy and justice, that kind of thing.
"The book was deemed so seditious that the British banned every copy. For the next 60 years there was no record of Khoony Vaisakhi; it came out in the 80s when my father got in touch with the India Office library in London and discovered they had kept one copy."
Suri, who was very close to his grandfather, describes how in his later years Singh spent more time in Preet Nagar, the model village outside Amritsar that he co-founded with fellow writers.
"For us we would go there every weekend," recalls Suri. "In the run-up to the 1971 war, we brought him from Preet Nagar to Amritsar. He and my grandmother spent two weeks of the war with us. When the war finished we took them back and 10 days later he passed away."
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