Saadat Hasan Manto (1912–1955) needs no introduction. One of the greatest stars of Urdu literature, Manto published over twenty collections of short stories in a literary career spanning almost two decades. Several of these have been adapted into films and plays that have won a multitude of awards and his stories about the 1947 Partition remain some of the best accounts ever written on the catastrophic event.
This book is the first of a three-volume series which will contain all of Saadat Hasan Manto’s 255 known stories translated into English for the very first time. Volume I collects fifty-four stories and two essays written by Manto about his time in Bombay and Poona in colonial India. The anthology includes well-known stories like ‘Mummy’ and ‘Janki’, which provide rare insights into the Poona film industry; the fascinating story of ‘Babu Gopinath’; and ‘My Marriage’ and ‘My Sahib’, two essays that read almost like stories. These meticulous translations by award-winning writer and translator Nasreen Rehman, distil the aura that Manto creates of a time, a place, and a moment.
Nasreen Rehman is a lapsed economist who worked in the private and public sectors in the UK and Pakistan before she turned to the arts and humanities. A historian of emotions and aesthetics, Nasreen is a translator, an activist, an academic, and an award-winning screenplay writer, who believes in the power of the arts to transform societies.
Born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, she divides her time between South Asia and the UK.
Read More‘What a terrific read! As with all the best translations, reading Nasreen Rehman’s translations of Manto’s stories, I felt like I was reading the original.’
—Javed Akhtar
‘Manto has finally found a translator worthy of him. Nasreen Rehman gives us privileged access to the subcontinent’s most brilliant short story writer. On view is Manto’s compelling vision of men and women living and dying in a century defined by its hope as much as tragedy.’
— Faisal Devji, Professor of Indian History
‘Rehman’s vibrant translation of South Asia’s ace storyteller of love and loss ensures that Manto remains relevant and also timeless.’
—Shruti Kapila, author of Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age
‘Nasreen Rehman has produced the only complete translation of Saadat Hasan Manto’s Urdu short stories… The distinctive feature of her achievement is that she tries to find the precise English equivalent of Manto’s Urdu words and phrases, thus trying to give the reader a feel of the idiom of the great master.’
—Tariq Rahman Ph.D, D.Litt