Blog

By Amrinder Sahota

Prepared with AI assistance.

A stranger's family tree is not automatically an invitation. There may be unfamiliar names, places you have never visited and a complicated relationship that requires three paragraphs to explain. You can respect someone's history without wanting to spend a whole book inside it.

So what makes a family memoir worth opening when the family is not yours?

I would start with the question the book is asking. Ancestry may supply its subject, but the reason...

A perfectly sensible character can be surprisingly difficult company for a novel. They notice the danger, ask the right question, leave at the right time and get a reasonable night’s sleep. Admirable behaviour. Potentially a very short book.

The more interesting question is what could make a sensible person stay.

Perhaps leaving would mean abandoning a friend. Perhaps the warning comes from someone they cannot bear to trust. Perhaps they understand the danger perfectly and think they are the...

By Amrinder Sahota

Suhotra. Sahotra. Sahota. Sihota. Four names can look like the beginning of an answer. For me, they became the beginning of more questions.

I went looking for my ancestors. The search changed what I meant by “my people.” Sun and Moon: One Tree, Many Names follows that movement through family memory, Punjab’s heritage, older texts, solar and lunar traditions, and changing faiths.

A surname can make the past feel close. It can also make us want certainty before the evidence is...

By Amrinder Sahota

Suppose the people you knew as heroes and villains were still children. Suppose they trusted you. Would knowing their story help you protect them—or make it harder to see who they were becoming?

That is the tension at the heart of Mrig: Reborn in the Mahabharata, Volume 1. I wanted the distance between a famous name and a living person to become part of the story. A boy standing beside you has needs, fears and loyalties that a label cannot contain.

The life before Mrig

Harmin...

By Amrinder Sahota

What do we inherit when we inherit a story? A name, perhaps. A place to belong. Sometimes a version of the past that tells us who to admire and whom to distrust. My books begin with the desire to look more closely at those stories—and at the people inside them.

I’m Amrinder Sahota, the author of Mrig: Reborn in the Mahabharata, Volume 1 and Sun and Moon: One Tree, Many Names. One is reincarnation fantasy; the other is reflective nonfiction about ancestry, Punjab’s heritage...