Saraswati: An Observer Best Debut Novel 2025

(Hardback, Main)

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* AN INDEPENDENT BEST BOOK OF 2025 * A GUARDIAN BOOK TO LOOK FORWARD TO *As a holy river returns, seven lives change course in this masterpiece debut for fans of David Mitchell, Zadie Smith and Eleanor Catton'Saraswati most certainly delivers, darting thrillerishly around the world to fold chewy themes of empire, populism and global warming into a cross-generational epic centred on seven strangers' OBSERVER, Best New Novelists for 2025'Saraswati is a major achievement, and Johal a huge talent. This should be one of the biggest novels of the year' Martin MacInnes, Booker-longlisted author of In AscensionCenturies ago, the holy river Saraswati flowed through what is now Punjab. Many dismiss this as myth, but when Satnam arrives in his ancestral village for his grandmother's funeral, he finds water in the dried-up well behind her house. The discovery sets in motion a contentious scheme to unearth the lost river as an act of Hindu nationalist pride.The river changes the course of Satnam's life, and those of six others. As legends and histories resurface, the distant relatives - from a Canadian eco-saboteur to a Mauritian pest exterminator to a Bollywood stunt double - are brought together in a rapidly changing India. Ambitious, moving and brimming with folklore, Saraswati is a tour de force from one of Britain's most feted young writers.

Reviews

'Virtuosic' - Guardian

'He has a sharp eye for details, an ear for the gaps and evasions in real dialogue, and a heart for the hopes and regrets that carry us through our lives. But most of all he has the the instincts of a storyteller, and has put those instincts to great effect' - Jon McGregor

'Exceptional' - Financial Times

Author Bio

Gurnaik Johal is a writer from West London. His 2022 collection We Move won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Tata Literature Live! Prize. Its opening story won the Galley Beggar Short Story Prize. Saraswati is his debut novel.