includes worldly wise women like Radha in the story ‘Cold Wave’ published in the collection Thirteenth Victim and Other Stories (1986).The hero of the story Nirmal is a young graduate who falls in love with this girl Radha who is a prostitute. She also expresses her ardent love for him. Nirmal’s father doesn’t permit his son to marry Radha and threatens to disown him. When Radha comes to know that Nirmal will be disinherited of all the wealth of his parents, she rejects his love and addresses him in a very cold way as if he was a complete stranger. In a story titled ‘Ajanta’ published in the collection The Gun and Other Stories Abbas describes some women, both Hindu and Muslim, who rejoice in the cold bloodedmurder of victims of communal violence.

Abbas was conscious of the struggles of people across the world. He had travelled round the world and had met world leaders like Khrushchev, Roosevelt, Nehru and Indira Gandhi. As a journalist he kept an eye on the happenings around the world. This gave him an added advantage as a fiction writer as well. His canvas is vast and covers the issues of the entire humanity. The story ‘The Black Sun’ portrays the racial discrimination suffered by the Negroes in the United States and even at the UNO. The unnamed black lady who assists the black leader to enter UNO building describes how the black people were treated as second class citizens in the United States but when it came to fighting in