Bitter Fruit: The Very Best of Saadat Hasan Manto Khalid Hasan Translator

Bitter Fruit: The Very Best of Saadat Hasan Manto brings together the most acclaimed short stories of Pakistan's most controversial literary figure. Saadat Hasan Manto wrote during the partition era and its immediate aftermath, crafting narratives that captured the chaos, moral ambiguity, and human suffering of the time with unflinching directness. His work was often censored, banned, and prosecuted - yet it remains essential to understanding modern South Asian literature.

This collection, translated by Khalid Hasan, presents Manto's stories in English with careful attention to preserving their original force. Hasan's translation maintains the spare, unsentimental prose that defined Manto's style, allowing readers to experience the raw power of narratives that refuse easy judgment or comfort. The selected stories span themes of violence, desire, class, and the absurdity of human behavior in times of upheaval.

Readers approaching Manto for the first time will find stories that are brief, dense, and deliberately provocative. His refusal to moralize - to tell readers what to think - distinguishes his work from much didactic literature of the same period. These are stories that linger precisely because they do not resolve neatly.

• Curated selection of Manto's most significant short fiction
• Translated by Khalid Hasan, a scholar of Urdu-English translation
• Essential reading for South Asian literature and partition history
• Originally written in Urdu during the 1940s-1950s

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