Short stories · A way to begin
آتش پارے
Not translated into English
Saadat Hasan Manto · 1936
Synopsis
Eight short stories, including the author's very first. In Tamasha, in Amritsar, military planes circle above the city and the armed police patrol the deserted bazaars, despite the ban on gatherings; little Khalid, six, takes the leaflets dropped from the sky for the announcement of a show, until an injured boy collapses in front of the house. The other pieces are titled Khooni Thook, Inqalab Pasand, Ji Aaya Sahab, Mahigir, Taqat ka Imtehan, Deewana Shayr and Chori.
Context
The collection appeared in Lahore in 1936, from Urdu Bookstall, when its author was still living in Amritsar; he dedicated it to his late father. Tamasha and Taqat ka Imtehan had first appeared in Khalq, Abdul Bari Alig's weekly. The first of these stories returns to the days of 1919 in Amritsar, the city of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, of which the author was a witness as a child according to Raza Naeem; his translators in the Bombay Literary Magazine say it is rarely reprinted in anthologies. Several pieces later passed into Manto ke Afsanay.
Who it is for
In Urdu; knowing what the Amritsar massacre of April 1919 was sheds light on the first story in the collection.
Prizes and reception
The author's first collection of original stories, described piece by piece in Leslie Flemming's bibliography (1985).