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Manto, Saadat Hasan. BLACK MILK: A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES... Translated from the Urdu by Hamid Jalal. Lahore, Pakistan: Alkitab, n.d. [1956]. Octavo, original plain pale green boards. First edition. Presentation copy with signed inscription by the translator on verso of dedication leaf. Twelve naturalistic stories about sex, alcohol, cigarettes, crime -- seamy first-person narratives reminiscent of Henry Miller or Bukowski. In a fairly typical story, "Nothing But Truth," the narrator describes how he became infatuated with a married woman: she strangles her husband one night and they have sex on the floor a few yards from the corpse; he then cuts up the corpse into pieces to remove it from the house; not long after that she then strangles him -- almost to death -- while he is sleeping, but he comes to as she is copulating with a new lover on the floor. He sits up and scares off his rival and runs to the bathroom to hide from the woman. A bit later he emerges to see her leaning out the window, and he grabs her buttocks and pushes her out, hearing the thud as her body hits the street. Soon afterwards he encounters his would-be replacement in a public urinal, knifes him to death so his intestines come "slithering out;" but, while dawdling to take his pulse to make sure he is dead, is apprehended by a police officer who has entered the urinal and started to unbutton his trousers. The translator contributes a six-page note and a twenty-page biographical introduction about Manto, his uncle, calling him the leading author of modern Urdu fiction. He had died before this book was published, at the age of 42. "In about sixteen years he wrote no less than three hundred short stories, sketches, radio plays and essays to say nothing of his dozen or so screen plays." He often clashed with government censors. This collection has been reprinted several times, including editions by Grove Press in 1961 and Penguin in 2007. The first edition is scarce and is an attractive and rather unusual example of modernist book design. Covers just a bit warped, else a fine copy with worn pictorial dust jacket. (#113316). - See more at: http://www.lwcurrey.com/pages/books/113316/saadat-hasan-manto/black-milk-a-collection-of-short-stories-translated-from-the-urdu-by-hamid- |
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