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The Exile

In 1839, Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab, one of India ’s greatest rulers, died and his empire was plunged into chaos. A decade later, weakened by internecine rivalry and intrigue, Punjab fell into the waiting hands of the British. The ruler who signed away the kingdom and its treasures, including the famed Koh-i-noor diamond, was an eleven-year-old boy, Duleep Singh, the youngest of Ranjit Singh's acknowledged sons. 

In this nuanced and poignant novel that draws upon true events, Navtej Sarna tells the unusual story of the last Maharaja of Punjab. As the British annexed his kingdom, Duleep was separated from his mother and his people, taken under British guardianship and converted to Christianity. At sixteen, he was transported to England to live the life of a country squire—an exile that he had been schooled to seek himself. But disillusionment with the treatment meted out to him and a late realization of his lost legacy turned Duleep into a rebel. He became a Sikh again and sought unsuccessfully to return to India and lead his people. Dragged into the murky politics of nineteenth-century Europe, depleted and vulnerable to deceit and ridicule, he died a lonely man in a cheap hotel room in Paris.

Told in Duleep Singh’s own voice, and the voices of four characters based on his contemporaries, The Exile is a compelling and deeply moving portrait of one of the most tragic figures of Sikh and Indian history. It is, equally, an unsparing examination of British imperialism, and the greed of the Indian princes that fed it.

"In [The Exile] Navtej Sarna Presents a gripping tragedy: a sordid tale of intrigue, treachery and cold-blooded murders that greeted the end of the Sikh Kingdom, and of the exile to England of its last Maharaja, Duleep Singh...A dextrous mix of fact and fiction by a master storyteller that holds the reader spellbound to the last page."
                                                        
                          -Khushwant Singh
                     

 

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We Weren't Lovers Like That
Penguin India

Navtej Sarna has published stories in magazines and journals in India and the UK. This is his first novel.

At the begining of the new millennium, Aftab's life came undone. He turned forty, and his wife left him for another man, taking their son with her. And now he is on a train to Dehradun, the town of his childhood, doing the one thing he feels he is still good at : running away. He has broken with his imperfect past. It is his way of getting his own back at the world.

With rare sensitivity Sarna's debut novel details a life of missed opportunities and approximate loves.

"Exquisitely written, deeply-felt, introspective and evocative, Sarna's first novel marks an auspicious debut."
                                                                                                                   -Shashi Tharoor

"Navtej Sarna's shimmering meditation on love and loss becomes a compelling journey through the haunted landscapes of memory. "
                                                                                                                                                         -Vikram Chandra


                                                                                                                       

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The Book of Nanak
By Navtej Sarna
Published by Penguin Viking

Navtej Sarna reconstructs the main events in Guru Nanak's life, shedding new light on his teachings.

There are also translations of some of his hymns which continue to inspire people the world over.

              

  • Folktales of Poland
Sterling Publishers
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