Black Borders

First published in 1947 as Siyah Hashiye, the 32 cameos that comprise this slim volume present horrifying vignettes from the holocaust of the Partition. Rape, murder, loot, pillage, greed and wanton destruction ... every conceivable horror is grist to Manto's mill. These sharply chiseled word-pictures, each compact and ruthlessly unadorned, are rendered into English in a stark, studiedly matter-of-fact and unsentimental translation. While taking us back to the bloodiest time in the history of the Indian sub-continent, they also point a warning finger at those who refuse to learn from past excesses.