Bonding in Translation
Sukrita Paul Kumar
A LIFE INCOMPLETE by Nanak Singh Harper Perennial, 2012, 273 pp., 299
August 2012, volume 36, No 8

In the foreword to his novel A Life Incomplete the legendary Punjabi author Nanak Singh narrates the story of the very conception of his novel and interestingly, he calls the foreword ‘More Fact than Foreword’. To me this story is actually a masterstroke of the story teller’s fictional strategy: it sets a perspective in the reader’s mind, even before starting the novel, clearly indicating that what is to follow as fiction is actually a real story. We are told that the writer has just about chronicled the experiences of another as narrated to him! And what is more, the writer himself had earlier started to write a novel by the same title as the one given to him now, Adh Khidya Phul (A flower, not fully blossomed). In fact he leaves one bewildered about the coincidence, though the way he narrates this fact, it appears to be a very natural and inevitable phenomenon! Nanak Singh was obviously a seasoned writer when he wrote this novel.

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