Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955) the man and the artist, was the envy of most of his contemporaries because of his abilities as a short story writer, acerbic wit and deceptively compassionate nature. It would not be wrong to say that he changed the course of Urdu literature, freeing it from the shackles of stultifying good manners, in its stead bringing compassion, humanity, and dry humour. A proper, well-bred bourgeois gentleman—the son of a judge in British India—he rebelled against his