Gurnaik Johal Writes of Rivers, Memory, And Things We Think Are Lost
Gurnaik Johal’s Saraswati is a buzz book that runs deeper than the hype
ASK ANY CHILD TO DRAW A LANDSCAPE, and you’ll get a familiar sketch: two mountains, a river winding through, the sun peeking over the ridge. There is something about rivers—real, forgotten or half imagined—that we can’t stop sketching, worshipping or arguing over.
It’s this tangle of faith, memory, climate panic, land and nationalist fervour that 27-year-old Gurnaik Johal dives into with Saraswati, lauded by The Observer and The Guardian as one of the best debut novels of 2025. “It is funny, I suppose. If I wrote a poetry collection next, I would be a debut again,” he jokes over Zoom from his London apartment. Johal’s previously published short story collection We Move (2022) won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Tata Literature Live! Prize.
Saraswati traces the descendants of Sejal and Jugaad, a real-life 19th-century inter-caste couple who elope, buy a farm and name their children after the great rivers that flow through Punjab. Over generations, their bloodlines scatter across Mauritius, Kenya and the North-West Frontier. At its heart is Satnam, a young British-Indian who flies to Punjab to sell the family farm after his grandmother’s death—only to find water in a well everyone thought had run dry. Locals see it as a sign: that the mythic Saraswati might flow again and it is from that ripple that the story fans out.
Much like the river in the book, the route to Saraswati wasn’t a straight course for Johal, who was born in Northolt, west London, graduated from the University of Manchester and now works as a Data Editor at an AI company. His grandfather’s death and talk of returning to India to scatter his ashes marked the beginning. “I suppose it was then that I really started looking into the river,” he says. The intimate pull of family, memory and grief—and the larger story of rivers and ritual—may have sparked the first ripples, but it was reports of toxic foam building up on the Yamuna, after it was officially declared dead due to not flowing, that really set the ideas in motion. “This mix of toxic waste and cremains creating this strangely ethereal foam, children playing in it, adults bathing… I just saw this fascinating cross-section between religion, faith and the climate crisis,” he recalls. Around the same time, there were also reports that the government had begun funding research into reviving the mythic Saraswati. Johal found himself wondering: “What if this ancient holy river was brought back in a time of water scarcity?”
While the novel traces rivers, myth and the climate crisis, Johal admits in the acknowledgements that it’s also, at heart, a personal search for family and belonging. “A lot of the book is about stories that are passed down—folk tales like Heer Ranjha and Sohni Mahiwal,” he says, adding that part of the joy of researching it was discovering the histories he’d never heard growing up.
Unsurprisingly then, when asked to pick the river that feels most personal to him, he smiles and says, “The Thames.” He recalls a childhood visit to the countryside near London, close to the river’s source: “There was this magical moment where you could hear the water running under the ground—these little streams that had briefly disappeared beneath the surface, only to emerge again.” As he speaks, he wonders aloud if that moment left a deeper impression than he realised—this idea of something vanishing, then returning. It’s a reflection that mirrors the heart of Saraswati: what’s buried isn’t always gone. It’s only waiting.
THE JOHAL READING LIST
MOST GIFTED
Exhalation by Ted Chiang: “It’s a collection I’ve gifted the most. Some of the stories are almost like parables or thought experiments. It’s a fun read —especially if you want something that feels new and alive.”
RETURN TO A CLASSIC
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: “I always assumed it would be heavy-going because it’s so old, but it’s incredibly fun
and funny, and there’s so much energy to it. It’s amazing to think of someone writing at a time when the form was still so loose and fluid.”
WESTERN ON REPEAT
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry: “It’s about cattle drivers going from Texas to Montana—simple in premise, but an epic with great characterisation. It moves slowly, which isn’t usually my thing, but I keep going back to it. Though it’s a bit heavy to carry on the Tube.”
THE ONE THAT SHAPED HIM
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri: “When I was starting out, I really aspired to her style: incredibly clean, simple prose with such depth of emotion. Some stories just stay lodged in your mind. I still think about A Temporary Matter all the time.”
To read more stories from Esquire India's August 2025 issue, pick up a copy of the magazine from your nearest newspaper stand or bookstore. Or click here to subscribe to the magazine.