# Navtej Sarna

Navtej Singh Sarna (born 1957) is an Indian author, columnist, diplomat and former Indian Ambassador to the United States. He previously served as the High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom, and the Ambassador to Israel. He has published three novels and many short stories and essays of literary criticism.

## Early life and career

Navtej Singh Sarna was born in 1957 in Jalandhar, East Punjab, India to noted writer in Punjabi, Mohinder Singh Sarna and Punjabi poet and translator Surjit Sarna, and did his schooling from St. Joseph's Academy, Dehradun. Later he joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1980. He was the longest-serving spokesperson of the Indian Foreign Ministry (six years), under two prime ministers, three foreign ministers and four foreign secretaries, till the end of his term in September, 2008.
Previously as a diplomat served in Moscow, Warsaw, Thimphu, Geneva, Teheran and Washington, DC. He served as India's ambassador to Israel from 2008 to 2012, High Commissioner to the UK 2016 and as India's ambassador to the United States from November 2016 to December 2018 and retired from the Indian Foreign Service on 31 December 2018, after serving his country for over 36 years.

## Writing career

Navtej Sarna's first novel published was We Weren't Lovers Like That in 2003, followed by The Book of Nanak was published in the same year. The Exile, published in 2008, is a novel based on the life of Duleep Singh, the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, and son of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. His short stories which appeared earlier in the London Magazine and broadcast over BBC have been put together in the collection 'Winter Evenings.' He translated the 'Zafarnama', the letter written in Persian verse by Guru Gobind Singh to emperor Aurungzeb. 'Savage Harvest' is Sarna's translation of thirty of his father's short stories on the partition of India from Punjabi to English. Sarna has also contributed extensively to journals and newspapers in India and abroad including The Financial Times, Times Literary Supplement, The Hindu, Hindustan Times, etc. His literary columns written over seven years for The Hindu have now appeared as a book entitled 'Second Thoughts on Books, Authors and the Writerly Life.'
In 2022, he wrote Crimson Spring, on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. He appeared on The Literary City with Ramjee Chandran podcast to talk about his book.

## Personal life

Ambassador Sarna speaks English, Hindi and Punjabi and also has knowledge of Russian and Polish. He is married to Dr. Avina Sarna and has one son and one daughter.

## Publications

* Folk Tales of Poland, Sterling Publications, 1991. ISBN 81-207-1072-X.
* We Weren't Lovers Like That. Penguin, May 2003. ISBN 0-14-302961-4.
* The Book of Nanak, Penguin, September 2003. ISBN 0-670-04978-6.
* The Exile. Penguin, 2008. ISBN 978-0-670-08208-7.
* 'Zafarnama'- a translation, Penguin 2011
* 'Winter Evenings'- a collection of short stories, Rupa Rainlight 2012
* 'Savage Harvest'- a translation of partition stories of Mohinder Singh Sarna, Rupa 2013.
* 'Indians at Herod's Gate'- a Jerusalem narrative, Rupa Rainlight 2014.
* 'Second Thoughts- on books, authors and the writerly life'- HarperCollins 2015

## Within anthologies

* Journeys : Heroes, Pilgrims, Explores, edited by Geeti Sen and Molly Kaushal. New Delhi, Penguin, 2004. ISBN 0-670-05796-7. 2. And the Baba went along the way, by Navtej Sarna.
* The Harper Collins Book of New Indian Fiction : Contemporary Writing in English, edited by Khushwant Singh. New Delhi, HarperCollins, 2005. ISBN 81-7223-584-4. 5. Madame Kitty by Navtej Sarna.
* 'Signals', a London Magazine anthology, UK