Sarmad Sehbai's ​The Blessed Curse

Reviewed by Salma Hussain

(Mawenzi House, 2024)

This review is not a review of Sarmad Sehbai’s The Blessed Curse. “Har chand kahein kay hey nahi hey.”
 
Absurdist fiction is a genre of literature that is claimed to have arisen in 1950s and 1960s France and Germany. Prompted by post-war disillusionment, as well as later events like the Atomic Bomb and the Cold War, artists questioned how they could continue creating art when life was evidently cruel, irrational and absurd.
 
Indeed, this same question follows us in our current times: how do artists make sense of a senseless, violent, cruel, incoherent world where innocent people are killed, and the insatiable, profit-driven agendas of hegemonic forces prevail?
 
One of the toys in the toolbox is absurdism.
 
Absurdism is a philosophy and movement which incorporates elements of satire, dark humour and incongruity to respond to the absurdity of human experience. It is an ethos and aesthetic that leans into the idea that life is incongruous, irreconcilable and meaningless.
 
Absurdist fiction certainly isn’t for everyone—it’s wonky, jarring, provocative. As per the lingo of our times, it’s 10/10 unhinged.
 
Absurdist literature not only experiments with content, but sometimes also with form. Reading a true absurdist novel is akin to doom-scrolling on social media: here’s ten seconds of someone’s funeral from the other side of the world, then a cat performing some mundane gesture in a suburban kitchen (slow-motion), cut to an anime character bopping along to a K-pop song, then a celeb-du-jour apologizing for a racist comment, then a leaked video from a former presidential candidate confessing to a crime, back to the funeral only now the anime character makes an appearance in the background shrouded in a black veil and swinging from a tree branch, then the whole movie cuts back to the cat in the kitchen, but this time the cat’s having babies and the format’s switched to grainy black and white then ta-da, the scrolling (or in our case, the novel) is over.
 
I bet in your head, you’re saying, “Nonsense. An absurdist novel is just nonsense. What’s the point of nonsense? Especially in the times we live in today when we so desperately need clarity and not absurdity?” You might even be thinking, “all writing needs ‘a narrative arc’: a plot that moves from A to B cleanly and seamlessly.” Furthermore, you could posit, “Why bother creating something, anything at all, if there’s no meaning in it?”
 
To appreciate absurdist literature, one needs to understand that the ethos is a middle finger to the idea that ‘reality’ can capture the strangeness of our world. Because absurdist fiction so boldly and unapologetically postulates that there is no pre-defined meaning, purpose or order to life, it releases us from the search for such. Intentionally or not, there is a joy in this liberation. Think Alice in Wonderland wherein whimsical, magical, scary events follow and blur into each other.
 
This review is not a review of Sarmad Sehbai’s The Blessed Curse. “Har chand kahein kay hey nahi hey.”
 
Enter The Blessed Curse.
 
This is the first English novel from radical Pakistani poet, playwright, film and theatre director Sarmad Sehbai, who now resides in the States. In Pakistan, Sehbai was regarded as one of their most original and provocative voices. At various times he was accused and exalted as being a werewolf, a Marxist, an absurdist, an infant terrible and a modern Sufi. His reaction to these labels was that he was none of these; he was simply himself.
 
Sehbai reads and writes in three languages (Punjabi, Urdu and English) with extraordinary skill and excellence. This is his first English novel and I hope he will follow up with many more.
 
Sehbai’s writing and commentary is sharp, ribald and entertaining. Through absurdist satire, The Blessed Curse presents a portrait of the contemporary socio-political conditions of Pakistan.  The novel follows a politically and militarily powerful trio of men as they embark on a journey to find the ultimate aphrodisiac for their masculinity. The use and misuse of religion, morality and piety are explored, what passes for “good governance” dissected, and both domestic and foreign hypocrisies exposed.
 
Throughout it all, The Blessed Curse has no singular narrative of meaning, no structured plot and, best of all, no discernible point. As such, Sehbai is able to present the reality of contemporary Pakistan in the truest manner possible. The Blessed Curse is a masterclass in capricious, audacious and provocative writing. I was left dazzled by the mastery of Sehbai’s writing: his daring and confidence with the English language is extraordinary, and he blends Punjabi and Urdu humour and poetry seamlessly into dialogues and scenes, adding layers, depth and richness to the text. In particular, Sehbai has an ear for the cadence and musicality of language(s).
 
This is not to say that there weren’t also times that I was shocked and appalled to the point of visibly flinching (the description of a woman’s desirability and lewd scenes with a donkey come to mind, but note that these were invitations to critique how desensitised we are to man’s debased quest for power). These instances were more than offset by various other passages where I laughed along and nodded vehemently. Sehbai is a philosopher in a jester’s costume. One may dismiss or denounce his work, but one can certainly not forget it.
 
The Blessed Curse is highly recommended for lovers of Kafka, Beckett, Buñel, Dali, and for anyone and everyone who needs a respite from predictable and redundant depictions of the global south.
 
This review is not a review of Sarmad Sehbai’s The Blessed Curse. “Har chand kahein kay hey nahi hey.”
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Salma Hussain writes poetry and prose. Her fiction has recently appeared in The Humber Literary Review, The Temz Review, Queen’s Quarterly, The Ex-Puritan and Prism International. Her young adult novel, The Secret Diary of Mona Hasan, about a young girl’s immigration and menstruation journey, was published by Penguin Random House in 2022. It was selected for ALA’s Rise: A Feminist Book Project List and shortlisted for the Geoffrey Wilson Historical Fiction prize. A chapbook of her poems from Baseline Press releases this summer 2025. You can find her on Instagram: @salma_h_writes.