untouchability. He was equally touched by the ideas of Marxist philosophy epitomised in the Great October Revolution of Russia in 1917.It was this ideological influence which motivated K.A. Abbas also to look for the real life stories of poverty and hunger, exploitation and protest, alienation and hope, patriarchy and the rise of the women’s voice. In fact, the fiction of Abbas, like his films and journalistic writings, brings the common man and his concerns centre stage.

Khwaja Ahmad Abbas is known as a film maker and a journalist all over the world. Not many people know that he wrote some seventy three books in the genres of fiction and non-fiction prose in Urdu, English and Hindi. His fiction includes fifteen novels and seven short story collections. These works reflecthis deep seated optimism and commitment to social transformation. He stood firmly for the values of democracy, secularism and socialism and proved himself to be an ambassador of the working and toiling masses of the world. Even the title of the second novel of the trilogy he wanted to write, The World Is My Village and his autobiography I Am Not An Island convey a lot about his ideology of Universal brotherhood, fraternity, justice and equality which are very much in tune with the watch words of the French Revolution. No wonder his writings got acclaim not just in India but all over the world.

The short stories of Khwaja Ahmad Abbas have been published in a number of collections beginning with Blood and stones and other stories (1947),