Set against a hypnotic, oppressive backdrop of political violence and natural disaster, A Splintering traces the class struggle of a woman stuck between province and metropolis, between motherhood and ambition. Disquieting and utterly gripping, it is an extraordinary achievement by Dur e Aziz Amna, an exploration of a complex and unforgettable character who will risk everything to carve out a life of her own.
As a holy river returns, seven lives change course in this masterpiece debut for fans of David Mitchell, Zadie Smith and Eleanor Catton
Centuries 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.
Dur e Aziz Amna is from Rawalpindi, Pakistan, and now lives in Newark, USA. Her debut novel, American Fever, was published in 2023 and won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and the South Asia Book Award. Her work also appears in the New York Times, Financial Times, and Al Jazeera, among others. She was selected as Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2022, and won the 2019 Financial Times / Bodley Head Essay Prize. She is a graduate of Yale College and the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan.
Gurnaik Johal’s short story collection We Move (Serpent’s Tail, 2022) won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Tata Literature Live! Prize, was a Guardian Book of the Year, and a Hindustan Times Book of the Year. He won the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize in 2022, and has since had work featured in BBC Radio 4’s Short Works series, as well as in the short fiction anthology Duets (Scratch Books, 2024). His first novel Saraswati is an Observer Best Debut of 2025, and has been shortlisted for the 2025 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize.
