talk to his friends, co-workers and family members. The result of this travelling and research has been a remarkable distillation of Manto*s image. She shows herself to be commendably knowledgeable about the literary history of the Indian subcontinent, especially when she deals with Manto*s connections with the Progressive Writers Movement and with his final breaking away from the movement. Manto seems to have gone through a somewhat complex relationship with the Progressive writers. He was acknowledged by a number of these writers as a fellow-traveller and respected for,his realism and his perceptive rendering of the various social issues. Initially, Manto liked being the object of the Progressives* admiration, but somewhere along the way, the Progressives themselves became disillusioned with his overriding individualism and began accusing him of being a reactionary. Unable to take criticism, as he always was, Manto responded by criticizing and even mocking the work of the Progressive writers. The gulf between him and the Progressives thus widened and became permanently unbridgeable. My problems with the book begin with the third section. After several readings of the book I continue to question the usefulness and validity of categorizing Manto*s stories as "romantic," or "sympathetic," or "political"—the categories Flemming has established. The stories she discusses could easily have been grouped together as stories of "process," of "dramatic reversal," or of "unexpected denouement," a mode of categorization which at least has the advantage of indicating Manto*s awareness of the techniques and form of the short story. Is any useful critical purpose served by labelling the stories as "romantic" or "sympathetic"? Furthermore, her use of the term "romantic" seems rather simplistic. In employing it as she frequently does, she shows no awareness of the work of either Northrop Frye or Gillian Beer or many other critics who have transformed Romance into a legitimate literary genre. Also, the precise meaning of the term "impressionistic" is never explained, and the reader is obliged to go on playing a guessing game. Literary impressionism is a vast area of scholarship which still must be approached with due care. The business of the use of the narrator in Manto*s stories is an intriguing one. Flemming has elaborately dealt with Manto's use of the first and third person narrators, and her discussion of the "Manto persona" is remarkably ingenious. She devotes considerable space to outlining the qualities which are common between this specialized first person narrator and the author. This narrator refers to himself as *Manto,' but this attribution does not fool a perceptive reader. The "Manto persona" is clearly a disguise to deal with characters whom the author knew well personally. Flemming explains the particular advantages and limitations of this device, and demonstrates convincingly that Manto was aware of the distinction between the author who wrote the story and the narrator who told it. This kind of awareness one does not come across in many Indian or Pakistani fiction writers. Hardly any writer in the subcontinent either concerns himself seriously with narratorial disguises or contemplates playing games with the readers by deploying unreliable narrators. 132