“The Bitter Harvest and Other Stories from Urdu Literature” published by the Syrian General Book Organization and translated by Farid Ismandar

Damascus (ST): “The Bitter Harvest and Other Stories of Urdu Literature” by the writer Sadat Hassan Manto, translated by Farid Ismandar, are stories from Urdu literature in the Hindustani language written in the Arabic Persian script, and spread in Pakistan. Hindustani was an official language in ancient India in the fourteenth century.

The collection of stories sheds light on events in India and Pakistan at the time, during the turbulent relations between them in a direct narrative style, in which the writer expresses his visions of social reality in non-systematic labels that belong to his own situation, as in the story of the bitter harvest.

The writer Manto refers to the events and upheavals, and the tragedies and human and social destruction they caused in a simple way, without resorting to symbols and indications in expressing what he wants, such as the story of the Great Partition.

In the book, the writer Manto presents the exchange of rituals and shooting despite the beauty of nature and the beauty of birds that are afflicted with fear and panic and the lack of social solutions, which causes fear even in animals.

K.Q.