Comprising 99 stories, essays, extracts, poems and articles (one for
each year of his life), the book is divided into fifteen sections, each
one corresponding to a genre that he excelled in. Family Matters
contains extracts from his autobiography and some personal narratives,
My Beloved Country has some extraordinary writing about India, The Sikhs
comprises excerpts from his books essays on the community and
translations of the Sikh hymns, The Uses and Abuses of Religion features
his articles on the dangers of communalism and a sublime meditation on
religion, his accounts of Pakistan and Pakistanis are included in
Passage to Pakistan, he wrote interestingly about famous people all his
life and twelve of his profiles feature in Singular People, a
self-taught naturalist, he was passionate about conservation-The
Ferocity and Flamboyance of Nature has writings on this theme, Sex on My
Mind contains some entertaining ruminations on sex, one of the subjects
that he was most associated with in the popular imagination. As with
sex, so with humour-a few of his funniest jokes find a place in A Merry
Heart. The section Enthusiasms, Rants and Soliloquies has a fair
representation of his electrifying polemics on a variety of subjects.
The most insightful of his thoughts on life, dealing with adversity,
ageing and death find a place In How to Live, How to Die. Selections
from the six novels he published are to be found in The Novels, Portrait
of a Lady and Other Stories features the eponymous story along with a
few others, a great admirer of writers in Urdu, Punjabi and Hindi, he
translated many of their works, some of which can be found in Toba Tek
Singh: Fiction in Translation and A Passion for Poetry. Together, the
various pieces in the book showcase Khushwant Singh's exceptional
accomplishments as a writer.
