Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-55) was the leading Urdu short-story writer of the twentieth century. He was born in Samrala in the Ludhiana district of Punjab. He worked for All India Radio during World War II and was a successful screenwriter in Bombay before moving to Pakistan at Partition. During his controversial two-decade career, Manto published twenty-two collections of stories, seven collections of radio plays, three collections of essays, and a novel.