Existential Strain in Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers Muhammad Nawaz 1 * & Muhammad Mehboob Ul Hassan 2 1 English Department, University of Lahore, Chenab Campus, Pakistan 2 University of Lahore, Chenab Campus, Pakistan Corresponding Author: Muhammad Nawaz, E-mail: mazinawaz@gmail.com ABSTRACT Pursuit of essence is the topic and it is a comparative study of the existential elements in Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers. To look out the meanings of the nature is something about the pursuit of essence. Meaning from nature means to know about the nature and to know about the facts and fgures of the nature by man’s own effort and for himself. Comparison is of existential elements in both pieces of literature. The study examines the Existential elements in Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers. This study is comparative and of Qualitative in nature. Different schools of Existentialism like Christian Existentialism are also part and parcel of research. Primary Data was collected from the text. The analysis of data showed that existential elements were rife in both of the pieces of Literature. INTRODUCTION Existentialism is concerned with the aspects of human exis- tence and their struggles. It is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence. Different but very simple questions are asked in it like “why I am? What I am doing? Why I exist?” Existentialism is that is something where an individual is free to think and to make its decisions by himself but one should remember that such decisions are taken for immedi- ate purposes so the individual is responsible for his the ac- tions and reactions. In existentialism individual tries to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe. Different theorists have also used this theory in their work to have the taste of existentialism. Jean Paul Sartre is the major fgure and Kierkegaard is known as the father of exis- tentialism other than, James Joyce, Ezra pound and Samuel Becket, who are the big names in the feld of modernism and whenever modernism is talked about, existentialism should be automatically considered as a part of study. There are some key factors which are to be explored with reference to the concept of Existentialism: (I) Absurdity (II) Anxiety (III) Meaninglessness (IV) Non-existence of God (V) Free will Researcher has taken Nadeem Aslam as the author whose works essentially show the above mentioned perspective. Nadeem Aslam was born on June 11, 1966, in Gujranwala, Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.6n.4p.22 Pakistan. He moved to UK when he was a teenager. His fam- ily migrated from Pakistan. He was a student of Bio-chemis- try in Manchester but later he left the University and wanted to become a writer. Season of Rain Birds which he wrote in 1993 is his frst novel that won the award for him. Different authors are having different point of views about Nadeem Aslam and his Maps for Lost Lovers is considered as a good piece of fction which is “Heartbreaking... A must read... The characters are so real the reader wants to speak with them... Aslam is a very skilled and talented writer. He gives us a window into a community we don’t often see. (The Decatur Daily) Maps for Lost Lovers is a story in which characters are following norms of existentialism in different ways through their actions and dialogues. This novel is divided into different sections which are named as seasons. Maps for Lost Lovers is a novel about the struggle of the individ- ual versus society, about the dislocation and about the bru- tality as well. One of the characters in the novel is Suraya and Suraya is divorced by her husband in Pakistan in a ft of drunkenness and, according to Islamic law, has to get married to and divorced from another man in order to be reunited with her frst husband and their child. Desperate, she starts an affair with Shamas, hoping he is going to be the route out of all this but this does not work as she thinks. International Journal of Comparative Literature & Translation Studies ISSN: 2202-9451 www.ijclts.aiac.org.au ARTICLE INFO Article history Received: August 28, 2018 Accepted: October 18, 2018 Published: October 31, 2018 Volume: 6 Issue: 4 Conficts of interest: None Funding: None Keywords: Existential Elements, Qualitative, Maps for Lost Lovers, Christian Existentialism, Primary Data, Rife