The pity of partition
Subtitle: Manto's life, times, and work across the India-Pakistan divide
By: Ayesha Jalal
Series: Lawrence Stone lectures
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Princeton
Language: eng
Number of pages: 265
ISBN-13: 9780691153629
Subjects: Correspondence; India-Pakistan Conflict, 1947-1949; Urdu Short stories; History and criticism; Criticism and interpretation; Political and social views; Narration (Rhetoric); Urdu Authors; South Asia; In literature; Biography; History
Description: "Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955) was an established Urdu short story writer and a rising screenwriter in Bombay at the time of India's partition in 1947, and he is perhaps best known for the short stories he wrote following his migration to Lahore in newly formed Pakistan. Today Manto is an acknowledged master of twentieth-century Urdu literature, and his fiction serves as a lens through which the tragedy of partition is brought sharply into focus. In The Pity of Partition, Manto's life and work serve as a prism to capture the human dimension of sectarian conflict in the final decades and immediate aftermath of the British raj. Ayesha Jalal draws on Manto's stories, sketches, and essays, as well as a trove of his private letters, to present an intimate history of partition and its devastating toll. Probing the creative tension between literature and history, she charts a new way of reconnecting the histories of individuals, families, and communities in the throes of cataclysmic change. Jalal brings to life the people, locales, and events that inspired Manto's fiction, which is characterized by an eye for detail, a measure of wit and irreverence, and elements of suspense and surprise. In turn, she mines these writings for fresh insights into everyday cosmopolitanism in Bombay and Lahore, the experience and causes of partition, the postcolonial transition, and the advent of the Cold War in South Asia. The first in-depth look in English at this influential literary figure, The Pity of Partition demonstrates the revelatory power of art in times of great historical rupture."--P. [2] of book jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Prelude: Manto and Partition; title: I. Stories; title: "Knives, Daggers, and Bullets Cannot Destroy Religion"; title: Amritsar Dreams of Revolution; title: Bombay : Challenges and Opportunities; title: II. Memories; title: Remembering Partition; title: From Cinema City to Conquering Air Waves; title: Living and Walking Bombay; title: III. Histories; title: Partition : Neither End nor Beginning; title: On the Postcolonial Moment; title: Pakistan and Uncle Sam's Cold War; title: Epilogue: "A Nail's Debt" : Manto Lives On...