Nanak Singh: the man who invented the Punjabi novel
2026-08-29 · 6 min read · Kitab Hut, Moosa
Start Nanak Singh with Pavittar Paapi, then Chitta Lahu, then Ik Mian Do Talwaran, which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1962. He is widely called the father of the Punjabi novel and survived the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919.
He was in the crowd at Jallianwala Bagh on Baisakhi 1919 and walked out of it alive. The long poem he wrote about that day, Khooni Vaisakhi, was banned by the colonial government and stayed lost for most of a century before a copy surfaced. Everything he wrote afterwards carries that.
Pavittar Paapi — the pure sinner
His most-read novel and the right place to start. A young man is taken for something he is not and spends the book paying for it. Nanak Singh writes in short scenes with clear motives, which is why the book still moves for readers who find older fiction slow.
Chitta Lahu — white blood
The social-reform novel, aimed squarely at the hypocrisies of respectable Punjabi society in the 1930s. It is more openly didactic than Pavittar Paapi. Read it for what the Punjabi novel was trying to be at the time.
Ik Mian Do Talwaran — two swords in one sheath
The Ghadar movement, and Kartar Singh Sarabha, who was hanged at nineteen. This is the novel that won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1962, and the one to read if you want the history and the story to arrive together.
Why he still matters
Before Nanak Singh, Punjabi prose fiction was mostly moral instruction with characters attached. He wrote more than thirty novels and made the form ordinary — something a Punjabi reader could simply pick up. Every novelist in this shop is downstream of that.
- Pujari — ₹300
- Chhalaava — ₹350
- Agg Di Khed — ₹280
- Meri Dunia — ₹250
The Nanak Singh shelf — Novels in print, from ₹150.
Questions readers ask
Who is called the father of the Punjabi novel?
Nanak Singh (1897–1971). He wrote more than thirty novels and established prose fiction as a popular form in Punjabi.
What is Khooni Vaisakhi?
A long poem Nanak Singh wrote about the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, which he survived. The colonial government banned it, and the text was lost for decades before being recovered and republished.
Which Nanak Singh novel won the Sahitya Akademi Award?
Ik Mian Do Talwaran, in 1962. It is set around the Ghadar movement and the life of Kartar Singh Sarabha.