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When Manto moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) during the 1930s, he was fascinated by its unique cosmopolitan culture, breathless energy, indelible spirit of freedom, and strange mix of people brought together by one common goal, to realise their deepest dreams and desires.
Bombay, was a pulsating, throbbing city of dreams, and the undisputed commercial capital of the country, filled with iconic characters that it has come to be known by such as prostitutes and pimps, vagabonds and lowlifes, the hard-working and the con-artists, film actors and creative intellectuals, and the thugs and scoundrels. Long before the world made them familiar, these characters, living on the edges of society, were brilliantly captured by Manto in Bombay Stories, in a way never seen before, as he chronicled the years he spent working in his favourite city.
Bombay Stories is a collection of short stories, most of which are named after each central character and narrated by a person referred to in the stories as ‘Manto Saab’. Through this seemingly autobiographical narrative voice used throughout the book, he gives a fly-on-the-wall account of the lives of these characters as he watches them from afar. Through characters like Mammad Bhai, prostitute Saugandhi, and the jewish woman Mozelle, he paints a dark but vivid picture portraying a heartrending account of their hidden pain and innermost struggles, against the backdrop of a brusque but magnificent Bombay.ISBN - 9788184003055
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Pages : 320
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