Matt Reeck

Aftab Ahmad

Freshly arrived in 1930s Bombay, Manto saw the city like no one else, an ethnic melting pot that became ever more varied as migrant workers flooded in. It was to be Manto’s favourite city. His edgy, moving stories, often peopled with prostitutes and criminals, remain startling and provocative even a hundred years after his birth – in searching out those forgotten by humanity, Manto wrote about what it means to be human. At his centenary, Bombay Stories brings together Manto’s work from his years in that city for the first time. Matt Reeck and Aftab Ahmad’s contemporary, nuanced translation captures the idiom and the essence of Urdu’s most celebrated short-story writer’s work. Censored, banned, demonized and ostracized: Saadat Hasan Manto’s short stories were considered obscene and downright dangerous during his lifetime and for years after. They still haven’t lost their power to shock and enthrall.

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