Veteran diplomat and novelist Navtej Sarna has been chosen for the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award 2025 for his English novel, Crimson Spring, which is based on the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
The award, which will be presented at a ceremony on March 31, 2026, comprises a copper plaque, a shawl, and a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh.
Incidentally, his father, the late Mohinder Singh Sarna, also a novelist, had won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1994 for his short stories in Punjabi.
Navtej Sarna is a retired 1980-batch Indian Foreign Service officer who has served as India’s Ambassador to the United States, High Commissioner to the UK, and Ambassador to Israel.
His novel, Crimson Spring, had also won the Kalinga Literary Festival Fiction Book Award 2022 and was long-listed for the JCB Prize for Literature.
Sarna is among the 24 authors recognised for the 2025 awards, with the Sahitya Akademi acknowledging his significant contribution to English literature.