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Disoriented Realism and Ethical Thinking: Partition Fiction of the 1940s and '50s

Abstract This article argues that a renewed attention to the principles of realist representation in partition writing will lead us to a deeper understanding of its aesthetic, critical, and political goals. Through readings of the work of Saadat Hasan Manto, Intizar Husain, and Salil Choudhary, I show that in this peculiarly disoriented form of realism, the only moral or formal shaping force in the universe is the author's voice suggesting that an alternative universe existed. The imaginative histories written about objects, and the narratives that seek to restore dignity to those lost in partition, all participate in this kind of ethical thinking.