Saadat Hasan Manto was born in Samrala in the Ludhiana district of Punjab in 1912. He became the leading, albeit controversial, Urdu short-story writer of the twentieth century. He was notorious for his searing exposition of the dark and uncomfortable truths which were considered indecorous and even scandalous by contemporary social mores. During World War II, he worked for All India Radio. He was also a successful screenwriter in Bombay prior to departing for Pakistan during the partition of the sub-continent in August 1947. During the course of his two-decade career, he published twenty-two collections of stories, seven collections of radio plays, three collections of essays, and a novel; however, he is most renowned for his short stories about the criminally motivated brutalities perpetrated by Punjabis of various confessions during Partition, which he opposed. He died in 1955.