1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910463205003321

Autore

Jalal Ayesha

Titolo

The pity of partition [[electronic resource] ] : Manto's life, times, and work across the India-Pakistan divide / / Ayesha Jalal

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Princeton, : Princeton University Press, c2013

ISBN

1-4008-4668-4

Edizione

[Course Book]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (289 p.)

Collana

The Lawrence Stone Lectures ; ; 3

Lawrence Stone lectures

Disciplina

891.4/3936

Soggetti

India-Pakistan Conflict, 1947-1949

Authors, Urdu - 20th century

Short stories, Urdu - History and criticism

Narration (Rhetoric) - Political aspects - South Asia - History - 20th century

Electronic books.

India History Partition, 1947

South Asia History 20th century

South Asia In literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Prelude: Manto and Partition -- I. Stories -- "Knives, Daggers, and Bullets Cannot Destroy Religion" -- Amritsar Dreams of Revolution -- Bombay : Challenges and Opportunities -- II. Memories -- Remembering Partition -- From Cinema City to Conquering Air Waves -- Living and Walking Bombay -- III. Histories -- Partition : Neither End nor Beginning -- On the Postcolonial Moment -- Pakistan and Uncle Sam's Cold War -- Epilogue: "A Nail's Debt" : Manto Lives On ...

Sommario/riassunto

Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955) was an established Urdu short story writer and a rising screenwriter in Bombay at the time of India's partition in 1947, and he is perhaps best known for the short stories he wrote following his migration to Lahore in newly formed Pakistan. Today Manto is an acknowledged master of twentieth-century Urdu literature, and his fiction serves as a lens through which the tragedy of partition is brought sharply into focus. In The Pity of Partition, Manto's



life and work serve as a prism to capture the human dimension of sectarian conflict in the final decades and immediate aftermath of the British raj. Ayesha Jalal draws on Manto's stories, sketches, and essays, as well as a trove of his private letters, to present an intimate history of partition and its devastating toll. Probing the creative tension between literature and history, she charts a new way of reconnecting the histories of individuals, families, and communities in the throes of cataclysmic change. Jalal brings to life the people, locales, and events that inspired Manto's fiction, which is characterized by an eye for detail, a measure of wit and irreverence, and elements of suspense and surprise. In turn, she mines these writings for fresh insights into everyday cosmopolitanism in Bombay and Lahore, the experience and causes of partition, the postcolonial transition, and the advent of the Cold War in South Asia. The first in-depth look in English at this influential literary figure, The Pity of Partition demonstrates the revelatory power of art in times of great historical rupture.