Amrita Pritam

Eight books and no films - the first person here who is purely a writer.

Eight books in this catalogue and not one film, which makes her the first person on this site who is here entirely as a writer.

Raseedi Ticket is the one to start with. It is her autobiography, and the title is a joke at her own expense: Khushwant Singh had told her that her life was so uneventful it would fit on the back of a revenue stamp, so she called the book that.

Also here: Naagmani, Nawi Rut in Punjabi, Bandh Darwaza in Gurmukhi, Kaal Chetana, Rang Ka Pat'ta, Dharti Sagar Aur Sipiyan, and Unchas Din.

She was the first major woman writer in modern Punjabi, and she wrote on both sides of a border that cut her language in half - published in Gurmukhi and read in Shahmukhi, which is why several of these are held in two scripts.

The poem everybody knows is Ajj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu, written on a train out of Lahore in 1947, addressed to a poet two centuries dead and asking him to speak from his grave about what was being done to Punjab. It is recited at Partition commemorations on both sides to this day.

Her novel Pinjar is about a Hindu woman abducted during Partition who is not taken back, which is the same situation Rajinder Singh Bedi wrote Laajwanti about, answered differently. Both writers are now in this catalogue, and both of those books are not far from each other.

Dates and credits from Wikidata.