DNF. Unfortunately this book didn’t quite land for me. I struggled to understand Satnan’s motivation to commit extreme violence against neighbouring land owners and lost the drive to continue. I can see some very favourable reviews from other readers so perhaps I should have another go as Johal can write engaging prose.

I can’t help but compare Saraswati to Sarah Hall’s equally ambitious but, in my opinion, superior Helm - also a collection of short stories set over various times and linked by a geographical theme.

My thanks to Serpent’s Tail and Netgalley for an advance review copy.

Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal is my introduction to this author. The writing is ambitious, covering a lot of ground. At the core, this is a journey of Sejal and Jugaad, their family spanning across multiple generations and countries whilst also touching on toxic nationalist politics, issues over water rights and climate change, about the greed of the capitalists and their individualistic motives claiming countless lives in the process.

What I loved about this book is certain characters and their stories which I thought were wonderfully written and have stayed with me, Satnam and Harsimran were particularly well thought out and easy to follow. Interwoven within the plot were Indian/Punjabi folk tales which brought a gorgeous cultural flavour to the overall storyline. The South-Asian representation was laudable and it was interesting how the author used the image of the family members named after rivers in India. The flow of these rivers a metaphor to depict the trajectory of a family that starts off in India and continues it's journey to settle across various locations in the world, ultimately fate (and the use of a find your family technology) bringing these characters together to where it all started, and how the political and geographical climate of the time affects them all of them in different ways,

That said, multiple characters and packing alot on the current Hindu nationalist politics, whilst reading on an e-reader, made this hard to follow at times. After the first character's short story, the narrative suddenly turned from third person to first person and it was unclear whose point of view it was. We delve deep into the lives of the protagonists, which can be read as short novellas that entwine to create a greater narrative but at really hard-hitting moments, which may have benefitted with a pause to garner a more impactful reading experience, it was lacking the punch required. I found myself re-reading sentences where a plot twist was dropped without much clamour.

Having finished the book, I can't say with any certainty what the message was, with loose storylines and unexplored themes I think the author had some brilliant ideas but was unable to execute them effectively. Perhaps this would have fared better as a series/duology, if the storyline was properly developed and fleshed out. Unfortunately I can't say with certainty if that would have worked for this genre - this is not a novel but carried far too much information to process and organise within one book. The flashbacks and inclusion of folk tales could have done with some additional editing as I think they added words to the book which made it unnecessarily crowded.

Overall, I did enjoy this book in its parts and would recommend to fans of literary fiction and wanting to read something a bit serious dealing with real issues in contemporary India and a nationalistic agenda. Thank you to netgalley, Serpent's Tail, Viper and Profile books for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest unedited review.

Literary monotone
—
When Satnam returns to India to sell of his late grandmother’s house and land, he decides instead to stay, inspired partly by the return of a long-vanished sacred river, the Saraswati. The return of the Saraswati changes not only Satnam’s life but the lives of other members of his far-flung family, all descendants of Sejal and Jugaad, namesakes of characters in a Punjabi qissi or fable. As the narrative touches each of them in turn, the sacred river ties them together, through the past, the present and the future.

Likened to David Mitchell, I think that the overall structure of the book is perhaps two or three times too far removed from Mitchell’s intricate puzzle box plots; it feels that Johal has worked too hard to hide the structure from the reader, ending up with what feels like disparate short stories (the author’s first book was a collection of short stories) interleaved with a frame story, that of Sejal and Jugaad, filled with more fable and legend, which is also disconnected from the rest of the book. Each individually narrated section is very well-written, full of energy and observations, but the style remains very similar for each point of view, rendering the entire book in a literary monotone with which I struggled.

Three and a half stars

This is a sweeping novel set in the very near future which is impossible to categorise. It is part a post-colonial novel, part a climate change novel, a family saga, myth or magic realism, and a bit of a mystery. It is also long, ventures almost all over the world, and has a large cast of characters.
In brief, this complex book concerns the Indian diaspora, specifically the descendants of one particular couple, and how the strength of a myth brings them together.
I would welcome the opportunity to read this in a book club setting so as to be able to discuss it with other readers.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. The explorations of myth and oral story telling were delicate and compelling. The look at the body as it passes through colonial rule was fascinating. The characters did sometimes blur into one but i am very excited for whatever he releases next.

Rich, lyrical, and deeply moving 🌺📖. Saraswati is a stunning exploration of identity, culture, and belonging, told with sensitivity and poetic beauty. Gurnaik Johal’s writing captures the nuances of family, faith, and generational divides with grace. I adored the emotional complexity and the vibrant cultural backdrop. A thoughtful, powerful read that lingers long after the final page.

I found this quite a densely written novel that made it hard for me to get into. I really wanted to like it more than I did.

I liked the premise of Saraswati but didn't find the writing engaging. There's a lot of indigestible politics and mythology thrown in quite early and no real character development. Satnam goes from being an annoyingly passive but vaguely liberal guy to a cheerleader for corruption and communal violence with no real explanation of how or why. I didn't feel engaged enough to continue with the other stories.

argh, i don’t know. this was by no means bad, but there was something about it that didn’t quite land for me. i think it would have benefitted from following less characters and from a narrower scope; as another reader said, it feels as though the author tried to bite more than they could chew. still, it is a quite competent debut, and i will most definitely read whatever johal comes up with next.

A very ambitious book, covering a lot of ground. At one level, it is a story of an Indian family and its spread across the world over multiple generations. I'm sure that the author meant this to be a bit of an allegory of the Indian diaspora. At another level, it's the story of the toxic Indian nationalism infecting all discourse in India, and claiming countless lives in the process. It's also the story of water and how rivers shape fates of people and nations, and how, when politically expedient, they can form the basis of nationalistic narratives. Finally, it's the story of Indian origin people navigating their lives, wherever they are geographically, dealing with somewhat similar challenges related to a profound sense of displacement.

I liked the book overall - it's well written, and reads a bit like a crime novel. There is a mystery to unravel, and unravelling it makes the reader want to delve deeper into the lives of the protagonists, undersatnding why they are the way they are, and what led them there. These mini narratives about the protagonists can be read almost like short novellas that intertwine to create the story (and the cloth that holds the book together, in a way). These novellas are punchy and interesting in their own right.

However, I did find the book a bit disorganised. It's almost like the author bit more than he could chew - there are loose storylines, themes that never get fully explored, and relationships that we only see glimpses of. It feels like the author had so many great ideas that he couldn't hold himself back from forcing them all into this one book. It does feel like there is probably material here to cover at least two or three more books, if these were well developed and properly fleshed out.

I'd recommend to anyone interested in the contemporary India and its natinalistic currents. The reader will enjoy it and will come out with a few strong impressions. Just don't expect this to be a work of art - it's a good book that is moderately well written, but it's not Rohinton Mistry or Rabindranath Tagore.

This is a very engrossing read, a weaving of family saga, Indian politics and colonial history. The Saraswati river is a constant in the narrative, providing a very interesting ecological aspect to this narrative.

This is an excellent book! It's epic and expansive in it's style, and I really enjoyed the format of multiple interlinking stories. It's so ambitious and I learnt a lot about Indian politics that I found really interesting. I thought the structure of the (distant) cousins around the world interwoven was very well done, and I enjoyed the break provided by the historical sections.

The only real problem I had was that I occasionally found it hard to follow, mainly due to how many characters there were. I would have liked maybe a cast list at the start to refer back to, and likewise (this is mainly due to my own ignorance) I would have liked it to be clearer where in the world each section was taking place, as I wasn't familiar with some of the cities. I do think some of this was more of a problem as I read it on an e-reader rather than a physical book, which would have made it easier to flick back through.

Overall I thought this was really great, and suspect it will be huge on release!

Thanks to NetGalley, the publishers and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow, this is an incredibly ambitious debut.

This novel traces the paths of six descendents of legendary characters Sejal and Jugaad, who named each of their seven children after Indian rivers. It is an original and sweeping multi-generational story beginning in India and finding moments in England, Singapore, Pakistan, Mauritius, Kenya, Nepal, etc. The way the separate stories intertwine and reconnect is really impressive and I adored how it all came together at the end.

Each character is really interesting, they are not all likeable but you can well understand their motives and desires.
The way that women are written is deeply touching, IMO very few men authors can write women this successfully (sadly) but it is of particular credit in this work.

So many interesting themes are incorporated, particularly the complex political points. Fictional events are woven in with non-fictional touchstones that make them feel very believable.
This book is also clearly very well researched which again lends the fictional events and characters greater credibility.

The plot flows well but occasionally meanders (pardon the puns) and there were a couple of times I had to pause and regather my thoughts where I started to find it hard to follow. This could be a fault of mine but I do think there were a few pages here and there that led my focus astray which could've been edited down.

Oh, and one VERY picky final minor point from a bat scientist... But vampire bats don't eat moths! Many other species do but vampire bats, as the name suggests, drink blood... However this sentence was taken from a particularly lovely and passage, so I will give it a pass 😉

4 stars

This book featured in the 2025 version of the influential and frequently literary-prize-prescient annual Observer Best Debut Novelist feature (last year included Colin Barrett and Kaliane Bradley, 2023 Tom Crewe. Michael Magee and Jacqueline Crooks – and earlier years have featured Natasha Brown, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Douglas Stuart, Sally Rooney, Rebecca Watson, Yara Rodrigues Fowler, JR Thorp Bonnie Garmus, Gail Honeyman among many others).

The author has previously published a short story collection “We Move” (2022) based in his birthplace of Northolt, West London, the first one of which “Arrival” won the 2022 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Award and can be found here (https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/7-ssp-202122).

In his Observer article about this collection – he says “Often when a short story writer does a novel, it feels as if they’ve diluted a short story over a larger page count …… I wanted this to be a maximalist book that earned its RRP.” and its fair to say he more than delivered on this – compared to the extremely narrow geographic boundaries (and at least based on the one I have read the tight writing) of his short stories this one sprawls across the world – centred very much in Punjab but taking in for example Canada and Diego Garcia.

And for once a blurb – here comparing to among others David Mitchell and Eleanor Catton – also delivers: with the integrated interconnected characters and structure of both writers (particularly earlier Mitchell).

The novel is set in a near future with climate change and particularly water shortages more acute than even now and with intra- and international disputes over water rights growing.

It is told in seven successive chapters –each featuring one of the descendants of one of the children of Sejal and Jugaad (the names of the characters in a Punjabi Qissi/Fable but here – as we discover in their story which is interleaved with the longer chapters - a couple from the late 19th Century, Sejal a gifted seamstress and Jugaad a Chamar who flees and becomes a boatman, both united not just in their love for each other but in their love of storytelling). The children were each named after the Five Rivers of the Punjab (Sutlej, Bease, Ravi, Chenab and Jhelum), the sixth after the transboundary Indus river, with a seventh chapter named Saraswati after the mythological river believed to have gone underground.

The first chapter opens with the story of Satnam – following the death of his Bibi (grandmother) he has travelled from his home of Wolverhampton to the drought ridden family farm which she moved back to in the Punjab and makes a hugely unexpected discovery of water – water which is quickly identified by government officials and priests as evidence that the Saraswati has returned. While excitement about the discovery – which is the first of copious appearances of water – grows and is linked both to historical beliefs of an ancient Saraswati civilisation which is co-opted by an ambitious army General with political ambitions, Satnam himself, a very passive character, finds himself drifting into a role as a heavy for the nascent Saraswati movement, putting the frighteners on farmers who will not sell up their land to allow the river to be rediscovered.

We then switch to Katrina – who we pick up in Diego Garcia (in the Chagos Islands) – she is a specialist in advanced pest control, in particular dealing with the infamous Yellow Crazy Ant. Part way through we switch to a first party viewpoint with an unnamed narrator – a feature writer working on an article about Sejal and Jugaad who she has “recently discovered were not only real people who had actually existed, but they were people to whom I was related” and using a genetic mapping app is starting to trace fellow descendants – and the two end up on a pilgrimage.

In turn:

Nathu is an archaeologist – drawn back by a lover of his wife (in an open/asexual marriage) to help with a Rosetta Stone for the Saraswati civilisation.

Gyan once a singer in a one-hit wonder band is now an ecological activist – we first meet her taking part in the sabotage of a logging operation in Canada

Harsimran is a stunt double then reality TV participant but is now on a religiously charged trial for the killing of a bull in a car accident involving the actor that he stood in for.

Mussafir – a teenage hustler is desperately trying to cross the border from Pakistan to India (closed due to a burgeoning water dispute) to attend the premiere of a film in which his idol Arushi (a singer who is theaded across the stories) plays the goddess Saraswati (the actor for which Harsiman stands in has a part) – and gets inadvertently involved in a cow-delivered biological terrorist attack.

In all of the stories the same first party voice researching the family breaks in and the last story is theirs pulling the previous stories together in a dramatic climax, perhaps also explaining how the story was put together and who for.

And as I said the story of Sejal and Jugaad is also interleaved between the chapters – their sections also typically including other fables and legends that they tell each other or others tell them to satisfy their love of stories and the last chapter both explains the narrator and her descendant’s connection to the other six river-named children, but also gives us the origins of Sejal and Jugaad as a fable.

Against all of this a number of themes and ideas recur:

In family terms: the diaspora of Sejal and Jugaad’s children and their families (whose later generations we are now reading about); some pieces of red cloth divided up among them by Sejal and further sub-divided by subsequent generations of women among their children – and another group of phulkari dupatta (embroidered scarfs I think) with a line of gold thread and seeming to correspond to where each of the children ended up.

Politically: the increasingly militant Saraswati nationalist movement; water disputes; rising tensions around the world from environmental degradation (there are some bravura passages in which the author rather draws away from what is an action lead narrative).

And narratively everything from desperate car crashes to dam collapses to catastrophic crowd crush.

Really this is an impressive debut – one which as I said earlier definitely lives up to the author’s maximalist aims and does live up to the David Mitchell/Eleanor Catton comparison.

It is also one I would like to revisit in hardcopy when published (as I think its length and its web of connections is more suited to that format) and I expect to have the opportunity to do so in future as I see it appearing on a number of prize lists – but particularly the 2026 Climate Fiction Prize (in fact I recommended it to the Prize organiser at the 2025 winner ceremony).

Saraswati is an ambitious debut novel, following the descendants of each of the seven children of Sejal and Jugaad, and how each of their lives are impacted by the unprecedented return of the Saraswati river. Each section of the novel follows one descendant, dispersed around the globe, and charts the ways that the river impacts them - whether massively, or less directly - their stories sometimes overlapping.

This is a novel that is very interested in storytelling - the power of a good story, and how these are passed down through the generations (even with a slight bending of the truth). Each of the characters’ stories are interesting, an engaging short story in their own right, with the sense that these will collide at the end for something big. And they do come together, a bit, and then the novel moves on again to something else, and then it ends. Perhaps I missed something!

Either way, a hugely enjoyable reading experience. Johal is a talented storyteller and sentence-crafter (maybe I should’ve just gone with “writer”), and there are no shortage of gripping reveals and beautiful phrases. Slightly underwhelming ending aside, this was great, and I’d really recommend it.

Thanks to the publisher, Serpent’s Tail, and Netgalley for the e-ARC.

Sarasati by Gurnaik Johal is epic in scope, full of stories and characters all linked to the river Saraswati. Johal is a natural story-teller making the book a pleasure to read. The pace became slow at times with all the different stories and themes but overall this was a thoroughly enjoyable read. I can't believe this is a debut novel. I look forward to more to come.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed the first part of the book but then the author dropped Sangham and Pala and moved onto new characters. There was a lot to like with many interesting themes but I felt it was too disjointed and too many new characters being introduced and then disposed of.

In Saraswasti, Gurnaik Johal takes us on a journey of the mythical Saraswati river through seven very different and unique characters.
Character and theme driven, this book is complex and well-written.
I enjoyed the many themes and topics it incorporates and its morals as well as the characters.
The pacing, the plot and the flow were uneven and slow at times, but the dialogue and the characterisation - especially that of Saraswati as an anchoring, connecting symbol was great.
3.5 stars rounded up.

Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal is a deeply ambitious, epic tale which is yet intimate and beautiful. There are seven stories here which span the globe but all of which connect back to India. Early reviews have compared this to David Mitchell, Eleanor Catton and Zadie Smith - this gives an indication of how incredibly well written Saraswati is. Gurnaik Johal is definitely one to watch. If at times the novel feels like it is over-reaching, or becoming too ambitious to contains itself, Johal masterfully brings it back from the brink, and back to something human and real. I very much loved reading this novel, and will definitely be watching out for more from it's author.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.