A journalist meets a hermit with an exciting, secret, almost unbelievable past. The man dies, leaving behind a will and a trunk-load of memoirs for the journalist — the only man he trusts. As the weather beaten pages come to life, it takes readers into a none-too-distant past, when India was on the verge of gaining Independence and plunges them into a world of intrigue, love, lust and betrayal — a world that is in part purely fictional, and yet, depressingly familiar even in 2013.

A Piece of The Giant may be a work of fiction, but a lot of what unfolds in it is a reflection of what happened before and after the Partition. GETTY Images