‘A backdrop of geological time’: Gurnaik Johal on why his novel has the river Saraswati in it

Gurnaik Johal is a writer from West London. His 2022 short story 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, his debut novel, was published recently by Serpent’s Tail in the UK and Hachette in the Indian subcontinent. It was shortlisted for the 2025 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize.

The novel follows the mythical river of Saraswati through what is now Northern India. But when Satnam arrives in his ancestral village for his grandmother's funeral, he is astonished to find water in the long-dry well behind her house. The discovery sets in motion a contentious scheme to unearth the lost river and build a gleaming new city on its banks, and Satnam – adrift from his job, girlfriend and flat back in London – soon finds himself swept up in this ferment of Hindu nationalist pride.

As the river alters Satnam’s course, so it reveals buried ties to six distant relatives scattered across the globe – from an ambitious writer with her eye on legacy to a Kenyan archaeologist to a Bollywood stunt double – who are brought together in a rapidly changing India.

In a conversation with Scroll, Johal talked about how he found...

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