The Individual and Society

26

The Dog of Tetwal

Sa’adat Hasan Manto

Sa’adat Hasan Manto (1912–55) was born in Samrala, in Punjab and educated in Amritsar and Aligarh. From 1941, he worked in Delhi at the All India Radio, when he wrote a number of radio plays. Two years later, Manto shifted to Bombay, writing screenplays for films and meeting other writers like Ismat Chughtai, Sardar Jafri and Krishan Chander. After the Partition, he decided to migrate to Lahore in 1948 where he was to die seven years later, fighting poverty and depression. His short stories, parables of the horror and violence of Partition, have been widely read and translated, among which are the classics like ‘Thanda Gosht’, ‘Toba Tek Singh’, and ‘Khol Do.’ His other writings have been collected in ...