Kingdom's End and Other Stories (English and Urdu Edition) - Hardcover

Manto, Saadat Hasan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0860911837 ISBN 13: 9780860911838

Publisher: Verso Books, 1988

Synopsis

Stories set in Bombay and other parts of India deal with prostitutes, pimps, street-traders, gangsters, and those caught up in the Partition of 1947

About this title

Reviews

Born in what is now the Indian state of Punjab, the Urdu writer Manto (1912-55) lived by his pen as journalist, essayist, screenwriter; his continuing popularity in his homeland, however, rests on more than 200 short stories, many revolving around the central event of his generationthe departure of the English overlords in 1947 and the Partition of the subcontinent into hostile states, Hindu and Muslim. Bombay, where Manto spent much of his working life, is the scene of many of his stories, about drifters, drinkers, gamblers and other marginal types. But historic events provide the tension, as in "It Happened in 1919," when Gandhi was denied freedom of movement, a despotic act that triggered bloody rioting in that year, and in the bizarre, caustic "Toba Tek Singh," where the inmates of lunatic asylums are exchanged, each to the appropriate nation, depending on religion, adding to the general madness of Partition. Manto sometimes displays a weakness for tricky devices, as in the self-indulgent title story, where an odd love affair of strangers takes place entirelyfrom accidental inception to fatal conclusionon the telephone. There's no denying Manto's talent for vivid description and narrative momentum, yet the relative remoteness of the Partition in time, place and culture will probably continue to deny his work a sizable Western audience.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Verso Books
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0860911837
• ISBN 13: 9780860911838
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272