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Testimonials of “Blasphear”
‘Sacred and scary games in Punjab. This is an earnest warning of a novel about perils of too much religion and too little humanity’—Mohammed
Hanif, author of The Case of Exploding Mangoes and Our Lady of Alice Bhatti.

‘A journey into the labyrinth of Pakistan, where a routine suicide investigation takes us into the world of religious parties, the blasphemy laws, a lynching and ordinary lives getting intertwined with forces that they cannot control. A deft and fast-paced work about very contemporary trends in South Asia’—Saba Naqvi, journalist and author of The Saffron Storm: From Vajpayee to Modi.

‘With a Chekhovian eye for select details and a remarkable insight into the culture and habitat within which his novel Blasphear is placed, Sohail Rauf tells an extraordinary tale of happenings—lynching, murder, betrayal and despair—that would hae ve been considered unusually tragic. However, the perpetual recurrence of a tragedy—as is the case in Pakistan—turns it into a commonplace incident. Rauf does not allow that to happen. Through a combination of his deep courage as a writer and formidable artistic ability, he poses a challenge to the spectres of bigotry, fanaticism, trickery and violence that hover above our heads’—Harris Khalique, poet and author