"If you find my stories dirty, the society you are living in is dirty. With my stories, I only expose the truth". -    Saadat Hassan Manto Saadat Hassan Manto is a well-known short story writer of the Urdu language. He is best remembered for his stor...

"If you find my stories dirty, the society you are living in is dirty. With my stories, I only expose the truth".
-    Saadat Hassan Manto

Saadat Hassan Manto is a well-known short story writer of the Urdu language. He is best remembered for his stories: Bu (Odour), Khol Do (Open It), Thanda Gosht (Cold Meat), and his masterwork, Toba Tek Singh.

Manto also wrote film and radio scripts and journalistic pieces. In his short but eventful life, he published 22 collections of short stories, one novel, five anthologies of radio plays, three collections of essays and two collections of personal sketches.

Combining psychoanalysis and human behaviour, he was arguably one of the best story tellers of the 20th century. When it comes to chronicling the collective madness that prevailed during the Partition of India, no other writer comes close to the body of work of Saadat Hasan Manto.

Manto started his literary career translating works of literary giants, such as Victor Hugo, Oscar Wilde and many Russian masters such as Chekov and Gorky. He began his writing career with his first short story Tamasha that was based on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. He is particularly known for his work Toba Tek Singh that was a reflection of collective madness that he saw. His numerous court cases and societal rebukes only deepened his cynical view of society.

Saadat Hasan Manto is often compared with D. H. Lawrence as he also wrote about the topics considered social taboos in Indo-Pakistani Society. His topics range from controversial topics of love, sex, incest, prostitution and the typical hypocrisy of a traditional male. In dealing with these topics, he doesn't conceal the truth and uses an intricately structured form with vivid satire and a good sense of humour.

His niece is the acclaimed Pakistani historian Ayesha Jalal.