A Game of Fire: The classic Punjabi novel, a sequel to Hymns in Blood
About this ebook
Taking the story of the Partition forward from Hymns in Blood, A Game of Fire follows Satnam as he observes the rising tide of communal violence threaten his beloved Amritsar. His own friends abandon their beliefs to join the relentless cycle of revenge and retribution, determined to purge the city of its large Muslim population. Even as he shelters the elderly man and the young woman in his own home, his faith in placing humanity before religion is severely tested and he oscillates between steadfastness and deep despair. Against the backdrop of emerging fissures in a new country and its people, Agg di Khed paints the picture of a city in turmoil and the unexpected heroes who rise from this catastrophe, its message as relevant today as it was when it was first published in 1948.
A Partition novel from the Punjabi, a big Indian classic from 1947.
This is the sequel to Hymns in Blood, published in 2022.
Navdeep Suri is very well-known in the conversation around the Partition.
About the author
Nanak Singh (1897–1971) is widely regarded as the father of the Punjabi novel. Despite 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 a former diplomat who has served in India's diplomatic missions in Washington DC and London. He was also India's ambassador to Egypt and UAE, High Commissioner to Australia and Consul General in Johannesburg. Navdeep has been striving to preserve the literary legacy of his grandfather Nanak Singh and bring his works to a wider audience. He has translated into English the classic 1930s Punjabi novels Pavitra Paapi (The Watchmaker) and Adh Khidya Phul (A Life Incomplete) His translation of Nanak Singh's lost poem Khooni Vaisakhi was published in 2019 and continues to be in the news and media mentions.
