Saturday, March 31, 2012

Saadat Hasan Manto's "Toba Tek Singh" (short story, non-genre, satire, free)

This appears to be a very famous story, though I'd not heard of it. Title is the name of both a village & of one of the protagonists hailing from the village.

Story satirizes & literalizes the madness that was the partition of India in 1947.

Story summary.

A couple of years after partition, the two countries have decided to exchange the inmates of their respective lunatic asylums, based on the religion of the inmates. The story, set in a lunatic asylum in Lahore, expresses the reactions of various inmates following the news of exchange.

Fact sheet.

First published: in Urdu in 1955. Where?
Download full text of English tranlation by Frances W Pritchett or uncredited Hindi translation from Columbia University. (I've personally read only the Hindi version)
Rating: B.

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