The big turning point in his life came in 1933, at age 21, when he met Abdul Bari Alig, a scholar and polemic writer who encouraged him to find his true talents and read Russian and French authors.[17] Bari also encouraged Manto to translate Victor Hugo's The Last Day of a Condemned Man into Urdu which was later published by Urdu Book Stall, Lahore as Sarguzasht-e-Aseer (A Prisoner's Story).[18] He then translated Oscar Wilde’s Vera into Urdu in 1934.[19] He published his first original story in Urdu, Tamasha (Spectacle) under a pseudonym in Abdul Bari Alig’s Urdu newspaper Khalq (Creation).