Book Review: Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal

Team Kitaab reviews Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal (Serpent’s Tail, 2025), calling it a book that floods its readers, leaving them altered in its wake.

In myth, the Saraswati river once flowed through North India, sustaining civilisations before vanishing into the soil of memory. In Gurnaik Johal’s dazzling debut novel, the river resurfaces, not only as water but as story, history, and inheritance. Saraswati begins in a Punjabi village where Satnam, a British-Indian man returning for his grandmother’s funeral, discovers water bubbling in a dried well. This single moment, uncanny, almost miraculous, sends ripples across continents and lives, drawing together seven disparate characters in an ambitious narrative that feels both ancient and urgent.

Johal, whose 2022 short story collection We Move established him as one of Britain’s most exciting young voices, here expands his canvas with remarkable confidence. His storytelling recalls the globe-spanning intricacy of David Mitchell, the social sharpness of Zadie Smith, and the structural daring of Eleanor Catton. Yet Saraswati never reads as derivative: Johal is carving his own space in contemporary literature, one attuned to the tangled legacies of empire, migration, and climate crisis.