MANTO: STORIES; Well Known, Less Known, Ill Known – Selected and Translated by Harish Narang

Description

After Manto My Love, which was the English translation of selected writings of Saadat Hasan Manto, Manto: Stories- Well Known, Less Known, Ill Known – is his second book of translation of Manto’s writings that focuses exclusively on his stories. Harish Narang has divided the texts into three sections – stories that are well known, stories that are less known and stories that are ill known. The last section includes those stories which were condemned as obscene writing and court cases were slapped against him. Most of them are also familiar to readers and could have also gone into the first section. Since every translation of a literary discourse is also a new interpretation, the translations of these stories carry the stamp of a new point of view by the translator. For instance, Khol Do has been given a unique interpretation by Harish Narang which is also evident from the title – ” My Daughter is Alive”. In the Introduction to the volume, the translator offers his justification for including each story thereby underlying their significance in the oeuvre of Manto. In an essay – Manto: An Evaluation” – appended at the end, Professor Narang offers his assessment of Manto as a major writer of not only the Indian subcontinent but of the world of literature globally. The translator says, though he is eighty, he is still not finished with translating Manto and ‘threatens’ to come out with another volume in course of time.