Between Absurdity and Authenticity: An Existentialist Study of Selected Balochi Short Stories by Naguman

Abstract

This article positions Naguman’s Balochi short stories, translated by Fazal Baloch, as a crucible for twentieth-century existential thought. The concepts articulated in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (1943), Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), and Kierkegaard’s Either/Or (1843) interrogate how the fiction wrestles with absurdity, bad faith, and the terror of radical freedom. The narratives emerges as philosophical laboratories: characters are cornered by an indifferent world and compelled to choose between authentic selfhood and the comfort of self-deception. In doing so, Naguman dramatizes a stark existential axiom: existence proceeds essence, meaning must be forged without guarantee, and courage is the only antidote to the void. This analysis reveals a distinctly Balochi articulation of existentialism, where desert landscapes and cultural dislocations become stages for universal human predicaments.

Keywords: Existentialism, absurdity, bad faith, authenticity, Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard, short fiction, existential angst