The bustling life of the most extraordinary city in the India subcontinent is captured in the short stories of Saadat Hasan Manto, one of the greatest Urdu writers of the last century. Bombay in the 1930s and 1940s reigned as the undisputed cosmopolitan capital of the subcontinent -- an exhilarating hub of license and liberty, and a city bursting with both creative energy and helpless despondency. It was to be the favourite city and muse of the most celebrated short story writer of India and Pakistan, Saadat Hasan Manto. His hard-edged, moving stories remain, a hundred years after his birth, startling and provocative. In searching out those forgotten by humanity -- prostitutes, pimps, intellectuals, aspiring film actors, conmen and crooks -- Manto wrote about what it means to be human. Matt Reeck and Aftab Ahmad'’s translations reach into the streets and capture Manto's world in contemporary, idiomatic English.