Riveting stories from the heart of the Vancouver Sikh experience.

Set among people who emigrated to Canada in the late twentieth century, facing racial animosity and economic insecurity, and moving forward as their lives became more settled, Fauji Banta Singh gives us rare glimpses into the private lives of Vancouver's Sikh community--the successes and failures, the growing and painful irrelevance of the old, changing values and the conditions of the women, the place of religion and tradition, and the ever-present echoes of distant Indian politics and national extremism. Unique and powerful, brutally honest yet compassionate, these stories present us with characters that are empathetic and vividly real.

Sadhu Binning's profile page

Sadhu Binning was born in India and immigrated to Canada in 1967. He has published more than fifteen books including one novel, two short story and four poetry collections. He edited a literary monthly Watno Dur from 1977 to 1982 and currently co edits Watan, a Punjabi quarterly. Sadhu is the founding member of the Vancouver Sath and Ankur collective. He has co-authored and produced a number of plays about the South Asian Community. A retired UBC language instructor, Sadhu lives in Burnaby, BC.

"Sadhu Binning has a unique style of vibrantly portraying his characters and his situations with utmost truthfulness. His tales evoke the anxieties of a life lived in exile and the pain of loss of home and identity." --Wasafiri

"Fauji Banta Singh and Other Stories portrays the migrant Punjabi, Sikh community in vivid colors and vibrant voices with empathy and irony. Binning captures these South Asian arrivants in their chequered humanity as they wrestle with rural customs in an urban culture, gender and generational divides, and homeland ghosts of the distant and recent past." --Amritjit Singh, Langston Hughes Professor of English, Ohio University

"[Fauji Banta Singh] demonstrate[s] the power of narrative as vital and powerful therapy, not only for the casualties, but also for the often-complacent cultural mainstream in Canada." --Dorothy F. Lane, Canadian Literature