Saadat Hasan Manto's stories are vivid, dangerous and troubling and they slice into the everyday world to reveal its sombre, dark heart. These stories were written from the mid 30s on, many under the shadow of Partition. No Indian writer since has quite managed to capture the underbelly of Indian life with as much sympathy and colour. In a new translation that for the first time captures the richness of Manto's prose and its combination of high emotion and taut narrative, this is a classic collection from the master of the Indian short story.

    Set in modern-day Islambad, Pakistan, the book depicts an extraordinary child who enables her mother, Sajida, and her grandfather, Ali, to confront the pasts they have chosen to suppress. Through Noor's artwork, her family members are transported through their haunted memories of the 1970 cyclone that claimed the lives of a million people and the violent atrocities of the 1971 conflict between East and West Pakistan that eventually created the independent country of Bangladesh. As Noor's drawings bring to life sights, sounds, smells, and sensations from the past, her family is forced to admit of the betrayals and disillusionments that they thought had been buried with time. Moving, heartbreaking, and unsettling by turns, Noor is a novel about the horrors of war, the power of forgiveness, and, most important, the strength of the human spirit.

    This examination of party and ministerial politics at the provincial level provides a unique perspective that is relatively little known. It contributes to a deeper understanding of Pakistan and the challenges and difficulties it has faced following independence in establishing a stable political system and government.

    Tracing the development of the country from its birth in 1947 to the present day, Ziring explores how a country once envisaged as a secular model for the Muslim world has been gripped by a form of radical Islamic fundamentalism. Focusing on the links between what is going on within Pakistan and its relationships with key foreign powers such as the US, this account portrays an unstable nation locked in a myriad of struggles - between democracy and military law, secularism and religious fanaticism - just as it finds itself as the centre of Bush's campaign to manage the Axis of Evil.