1912) would the prolonged courtship with the dastan finally appear to break off, only to be resumed briefly in the works of his younger contemporary, Abdul Halim Sharar. Not until the novels of Deputy Nazir Ahmad (d. And while its setting was contemporary, its contents in some respects new, and its dependence on supernatural incident practically non-existent, Pandit Ratan Nath Sarshar’s Fasaana-ye Aazaad (serialised between 18 in Avadh Akhbaar) too, did not manage to break away entirely from the style of the dastan. However, they did not depart in any significant way from the long-standing tradition of the dastan, except perhaps in length. The dastan was thus a different - but by no means inferior - fictional possibility from the Western novel and short story.Īlthough artistically more refined works of fiction were still roughly a hundred years in the future, some transitional work had already begun to appear in the early nineteenth century, as in Mir Amman’s Baagh-o-Bahaar (1801) and Rajab Ali Beg Surur’s Fasaana-ye ‘Ajaa’ib (1834). Stripped of individuality, they were commissioned to personify abstract ideas. It referred all causality to supernatural rather than to human or natural agencies, offered a different notion of time, and its characters were unavoidably two-dimensional. Here, the intent and design was to prove or disprove, rather than to reveal, some established or preordained truth about life.
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More significantly, the dastan, because of its flair for exuberant fantasy and the supernatural, used plot and character in fundamentally disparate ways from Western fiction.
#Manto urdu stories professional#
But the dastan, until it was finally written down and printed in the nineteenth century, was an oral and anonymous composition, narrated by professional dastan-gos or story-tellers for the entertainment of feudal or metropolitan aristocracy, though it didn’t preclude public recitals for the amusement of the masses.
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It isn’t exactly that Urdu lacked fiction of any kind. Exceptionally rich in poetic creation, the pre-modern Urdu literary tradition offers few works of belles-lettres in prose that can compare favourably with modern notions of the short story or novel. This has indeed made Manto a widely read author all over the world even after 58 years of his death.Fiction in its limited Western sense and in two of its major forms - the novel and short story - is only a recent and borrowed phenomenon in Urdu. Thus, it gains a character of universality. Many of his thoughts seem relevant even today and this book stands as a testimony to his talent. It mirrors the then prevalent conditions appropriately. This is the way which Manto adopted to tell the truth to the world.
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The following letters deal with atom bomb explosion, Pakistan’s national affairs, America’s double standards in achieving world peace and Manto’s inclination towards communism. The second one throws light on the cultural politics prevalent during the Cold War period. The first letter lays bare the tragedy of India’s partition and the poverty of Pakistan. These letters, written during the early 1950s, clearly expose the selfish stands of America and its efforts to achieve its own goals. This collection mainly comprises nine letters written by Manto to America which was called Uncle Sam along with some critical essays about his works. Hasan Nayeem Surkoda, who translated the first collection of writer Saadat Hasan Manto’s Urdu stories into Kannada, has now translated his satirical writings in this book titled Sam Unclege Patragalu Mattu Itara Kidigedi Barahagalu.