Khushwant Singh was born at Hadali in Khushab district in what is now Pakistan, in a village he wrote about for the rest of his life and visited once, in 1987, where the villagers had put up a plaque saying that this was the birthplace of their brother.
His father, Sir Sobha Singh, was one of the contractors who built New Delhi.
He wrote Train to Pakistan in 1956, a seminal novel of Partition, set in a fictional village on the border where the killing arrives from outside and is done by people who know each other.
He wrote a two-volume History of the Sikhs, which remains the standard English-language history, and a biography of Ranjit Singh Ji.
He edited the Illustrated Weekly of India and the Hindustan Times, wrote a column for fifty years, and made a public career out of being rude, irreligious and unembarrassed.
He returned his Padma Bhushan in 1984 over Operation Blue Star and was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2007. He died in 2014 at ninety-nine.
Train to Pakistan, published in 1956, is the novel of Partition in English and is set in a village on the line where the two communities have lived together.
His two volume history of the Sikhs is the standard English account and has been in print for sixty years, and he edited newspapers and magazines and wrote a column for decades.
He was a lawyer and a diplomat before he wrote. Hadali, his village, is in Pakistan and he went back to it late in life.