Becoming Authentic: A Sartrean Reading of Anjum Hasan’s The Cosmopolitans

This paper critically examines Anjum Hasan's novel The Cosmopolitans (2015), employing the philosophical lens of Sartre's existentialism to explore how Qayenaat, the protagonist, navigates the existential themes of bad faith, alienation, being-for-others, and the pursuit of authenticity. Her fluctuating relationships, avoidance of societal roles, failed artistic ambitions, and eventual withdrawal into a fabricated identity are analysed as modes of existential evasion. Drawing on some of Sartre's insights from Being and Nothingness, Existentialism Is a Humanism, and The Transcendence of the Ego, the paper traces how the protagonist represses her freedom by embracing illusions and other-directedness. Negotiating the denial of facticity to gradually acknowledging existential responsibility, the narrative presents a significant move toward authenticity. In this way, the novel affirms Sartre's proposition that existence precedes essence and that meaning will always be created through action.