Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Saadat Hasan Manto is important as a writer because there is nothing prettied up about his writing. One of the things that I object to about most of the people who write about Pakistan is “the scent of mangoes and jasmine school of writing”. I think that does a disservice to the country and plays into the stereotypes that most Westerners have about Pakistan. He tells it like it is, with all the violence, madness and political turmoil that involves.
Tell me about your first book, Mottled Dawn.
All of these stories are brief, violent, hastily written and stark. I think this is very fitting to the period which he was describing which is around the time of the Partition. It’s similar to Pakistan today which has become a more violent place than a few years ago. I particularly recommend his story, “Toba Tek Singh”, which is about how two or three years after Partition, the governments of Pakistan and India decided to exchange lunatics. In other words, Muslim lunatics in Indian madhouses would be sent to Pakistan, while Hindu and Sikh lunatics in Pakistani madhouses were handed over to India. But, one lunatic – Toba Tek Singh – ended up in no-man’s-land between India and Pakistan.
For me, Saadat Hasan Manto is important as a writer because you see with stories like this there is nothing prettied up about his writing. One of the things that I object to about most of the people who write about Pakistan is “the scent of mangoes and jasmine school of writing”. I think that does a disservice to the country and plays into the stereotypes that most Westerners have about Pakistan, and he certainly doesn’t do that. He tells it like it is, with all the violence, madness and political turmoil that involves.
Read full interviewDaniyal Mueenuddin was brought up in Lahore, Pakistan and Elroy, Wisconsin. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Yale Law School, his stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope and The Best American Short Stories 2008 selected by Salman Rushdie. For a number of years he practised law in New York. He is based on his family’s farm in Pakistan’s southern Punjab – which inspired his collection of short stories, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders – but is living in London for the next ten months while his wife pursues her graduate studies. Daniyal Mueenuddin talks to FiveBooks about the changing face of Pakistan.
