Google honours Manto with doodle on 108th birthday

Google honoured late Pakistani journalist, playwright, author and screenwriter Saadat Hasan Manto on the occasion of his 108th birthday with a doodle on Monday.

The illustration, made by Lahore-based guest artist Shehzil Malik, features Manto scribbling something on a page with a pen in his hand, dressed in white.

Manto was born on May 11, 1912, in Samrala in the British Indian state of Punjab. He matured and evolved as an author at a time when calls for the British to leave the subcontinent were gaining ground and with it, a rise in civil unrest.

He became an established author in India before partition after discovering a fondness for literature. "He had published his own translations of European classics in his native Urdu tongue. He soon progressed to original fiction, channeling his iconoclastic spirit into short stories like the aptly titled “Revolutionary” (“Inqilab Pasand", 1935)," read the short note on him posted on Google.

After the partition of 1947, he migrated to Pakistan. Manto wrote 22 collections of short stories but that wasn't where he stopped. He also wrote a novel, three collections of essays, over 100 radio plays, and more than 15 film scripts.

He is credited with being one of the finest fiction writers of South Asia.