peteg's blog - noise - books - 2014 12 06 SaadatHasanManto BombayStories

Saadat Hasan Manto: Bombay Stories

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According to some, Manto "has a good claim to be considered the greatest South Asian writer of the 20th century". Digging this book out of the Chicago Public Library took some doing: the super-helpful girl on level 7 of the Harold Washington found it somewhere I would never have thought to look. I heard about the author from Pankaj Mishra, and I guess I was hoping to read something more like what he described than a series of almost still-low-lifes in Bombay. Shades of Charles Bukowski. I did manage to plough through it in double-time, and for that I am thankful.