Bombay Stories

Bombay in the 1930s and 1940s reigned as the undisputed cosmopolitan capital of the subcontinent - an exhilarating hub of license and liberty, and a city bursting with both creative energy and helpless despondency. It was to be the favourite city and muse of the most celebrated short story writer of India and Pakistan, Saadat Hasan Manto. His hard-edged, moving stories remain, a hundred years after his birth, startling and provocative. In searching out those forgotten by humanity - prostitutes, pimps, intellectuals, aspiring film actors, conmen and crooks - Manto wrote about what it means to be human.