The 2024 Crossword Book Awards longlists of ten books each of five categories have been announced

The ten-book longlists in the five jury categories – Fiction, Nonfiction, Translation, Children’s, Business and Management – for the 2024 Crossword Book Awards have been announced. The shortlist will be announced on November 11, and the awards ceremony will take place in Mumbai on December 12. The winning authors will get a cash prize of Rs 50,000 each.

Each category is being judged by a separate jury. The jury for Fiction comprises Manjula Narayan, Prayaag Akbar, and Somak Ghoshal. The Nonfiction jury consists of TCA Raghavan, Anuradha Sengupta, and Kaveree Bamzai. Translations are being judged by Arshia Sattar, Nandini Nair, and Malashri Lal. The judges for Children’s are Paro Anand, Parvati Sharma, and Bulbul Sharma. Khozem Merchant, Shaili Chopra, and Sriram make up the jury for Business and Management.

Here are the longlisted books in each category:

Fiction

History’s Angel, Anjum Hasan, Bloomsbury India

While history teacher Alif is leading a school field trip, a student goads him and, in a fit of anger, Alif twists his ear. His job is suddenly on the line, and Alif finds his life rapidly descending into chaos.

Never, Never Land, Namita Gokhale, Speaking Tiger Books

Lonely, middle-aged, at a personal and professional dead-end, Iti flees Gurgaon for the remote cottage in the Kumaon Himalayas where she had spent perhaps the happiest years of her childhood. Giving her company is her 102-year-old grandmother and her ninety-something-year-old companion.

The Memoirs of Valmiki Rao, Lindsay Pereira, Penguin India

Mumbai, in the early 90s. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement is at its peak, and the Babri Masjid has just fallen. Decades later, in a corner of the city, a retired postman living alone in a dilapidated room recalls those months of madness and how they changed everyone he knew.

The East Indian, Brinda Charry, HarperCollins India

Like the play that captivated him, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Tony, an indentured Indian in the New World, has a life that is rich with oddities and hijinks, humour and tragedy.

The Gallery, Manju Kapur, Penguin India

When an art gallery is opened, the women in Manju Kapur’s novel navigate their desires, as they are forced to re-examine marriage, as well as to consider the role of art as property, value and self-expression.

Quarterlife, Devika Rege, HarperCollins India

From identity politics to corporate ambitions to the limits of idealism, each of the young characters in the novel embodies a hypothesis. As they come to grips with the new India, they also become aware of a deeply fraught and complex milieu.

Can’t, Shinie Antony

A woman in her seventies embarks on a journey to track down all her husband’s lovers. She is accompanied by a seventeen-year-old boy on her mission.

Chronicle of an Hour and a Half, Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari, Westland

A rumour of an illicit affair takes on a life of its own, fuelled by feverish WhatsApp messages. In the ensuing chaos, a village erupts into violence and a mob takes to the street, baying for blood.

Tall Tales By a Small Dog, Omair Ahmad, Speaking Tiger Books

Kallu, a mongrel of modest proportions who roams the streets of Gorakhpur, has some stories to tell of his town. But dogs cannot be trusted to speak the truth, so the human narrator tries to sift fact from fantasy.

Shakchunni, Arnab Ray, Hachette India

The Great Famine is ravaging Bengal. The once verdant countryside is now a mass morgue. Yet none of that pain seems to touch the Banerjees, the lords of Shyamlapur. But their days of prosperity are also short-lived.

Nonfiction

From Phansi Yard: My Year with the Women of Yerawada, Sudha Bharadwaj, Juggernaut

This is Sudha Bharadwaj’s account of her time in Yerwada Jail in Pun in a high-security wing called Phansi Yard, from November 2018 to February 2020.

The Day I Became a Runner: A Women’s History of India through the Lens of Sport, Sohini Chattopadhyay, HarperCollins India

Sohini Chattopadhyay presents the compelling stories of eight athletes spanning the history of independent India and involving women from a wide range of social and geographical backgrounds.

City on Fire: A Boyhood in Aligarh, Zeyad Masroor Khan, HarperCollins India

In his coming-of-age memoir, Khan writes about the undercurrents of religious violence of the 1990s and the ensuing “othering” that followed him everywhere he went because of his faith.

Swadeshi Steam, VO Chidambaram Pillai and the Battle against the British Maritime Empire, AR Venkatachalapathy, Penguin India

In the small port town of Tuticorin, a lawyer named VO Chidambaram Pillai – known to the world as VOC – had a revolutionary idea that would challenge the might of the English navy and the empire itself.

A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of BR Ambedkar, Ashok Gopal, Navayana

Ashok Gopal reads the bulk of Ambedkar’s writings, speeches and letters in Marathi and English, and what Ambedkar himself would have read to examine the struggle that went into the making of Ambedkar, the legend.

Mother Cow, Mother India: A Multispecies Politics of Dairy in India, Yamini Narayanan, Navayana

Yamini Narayanan’s multispecies ethnography frames animals as key political subjects rather than as mere objects of analysis. This book shows new ways in which anthropocentrism, casteism, communalism, and fascism operate together, in India and elsewhere.

Anger Management: The Troubled Diplomatic Relationship between India and Pakistan, Ajay Bisaria, Aleph Book Company

Diplomat Ajay Bisaria blends scholarship, telling revelations, memoir, and history into a study of the diplomatic engagement between India and Pakistan.

Being Hindu, Being Indian: Lala Lajpat Rai’s Ideas of Nationhood, Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav, Penguin India

Bhargav’s book offers the first comprehensive examination of Lajpat Rai’s nationalist thought.

Marginlands: Indian Landscapes on the Brink, Arati Kumar-Rao, Pan Macmillan India

Arati Kumar-Rao journeys to India’s marginlands, listening intently to their inhabitants as she documents the misguided decisions, wilfully ignored warnings and disregarded evidence that have brought us almost to a point of no return.

Fire on the Ganges: Life Among the Dead in Banares, Radhika Iyengar, HarperCollins India

The book chronicles the everyday realities of the Doms, a sub-caste of untouchables who burn Hindu bodies on the ghats of Banaras. It plunges into the city’s historical past while narrowing its lens to a few spirited characters from the Dom community.

Translations

Beneath the Simolu Tree, Sarmishtha Pritam, translated from the Assamese by Ranjita Biswas, Simon and Schuster India

In a village in rural Assam, quiet, unassuming Paridhi grows up witnessing domestic violence at close quarters. The conservative society she inhabits, shapes and befuddles her. But she’s not the one to be silenced.

Boy, Unloved, Damodar Mauzo, translated from the Konkani by Jerry Pinto, Speaking Tiger Books

In a sleepy village in Goa, Vipin grows up in a house whose windows are never opened and no one ever comes to visit. It is a strange and solitary existence, dominated by his overbearing and cruel father. In this home, Vipin grows up friendless, till he begins to read voraciously.

I Named My Sister Silence, Manoj Rupda, translated from the Hindi by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, Westland

Determined to seek out his sister who has gone missing, a young man enters the forest and is soon confronted with the elaborate deceptions of those who rule and of those who profit from the land they do not own or understand.

Dudiya: In Your Burning Land, Vishwas Patil, translated from the Marathi by Nadeem Khan, Niyogi Books

Civil servant Dilip Pawar is posted as Election Observer in the Naxal-infested districts of Chhattisgarh. What happens in the next two months till the general election results are announced changes his outlook on life forever.

Mithun Number Two, Jayant Kaikini, translated from the Kannada by Tejaswini Niranjana, Westland

The stories in this collection captures moments of transcendence in the midst of anonymity and routine in the grand city of Mumbai.

Fire Bird, Perumal Murugan, translated from the Tamil by Janani Kannan, Penguin India

Muthu’s world turned is upside down when his father divides the family land, leaving him with practically nothing and causing irreparable damage to his family's bonds. He is forced to leave home and forge a new future for himself and his wife and children.

Sakina’s Kiss, Vivek Shanbhag, translated from the Kannada by Srinath Perur, Penguin India

Venkat’s quiet, middle-class life is upended when one evening two insolent young men turn up at home claiming to have business with his daughter Rekha.

A Woman Burnt, Imayam, translated from the Tamil by GJV Prasad, Simon and Schuster India

Revathi, an engineer, marries an auto driver against her family’s wishes. As her life unravels, she faces the realities of narrow-minded people who do not let themselves and others rise above the societal chains that shackle them.

Maria Just Maria, Sandhya Mary, translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil, HarperCollins India

Following the death of her grandfather, Maria has stopped speaking – not because she can’t, but because she doesn’t want to. Now in a psychiatric hospital, as she begins the process of “reconnecting with reality”.

Fruits of the Barren Tree, Lekhnath Chhetri, translated from the Nepali by Anurag Basnet, Penguin India

Darjeeling, late 1980s. The demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland has taken a violent turn. The Green Party is at war with the Red Party-and with the state’s security forces. Murder, loot, terror and arson beset the Himalayan foothills.

Children’s books

Zen, Shabnam Minwala, Duckbill Books

In 1935, Zainab Essanji wants to break out of her restricted life and be part of the independence movement. But it seems that all she is destined to do is embroider and wait to get married. In 2019, Zainab Currimji, a class eleven student, is unhappy at getting drawn into debates and controversies which she would rather not be part of. But in India of 2019, how can one not be drawn into these?

The Henna Start-Up, Andaleeb Wajid, DuckBill Books

Abir Maqsood has a career to carve, money to earn, and also a dining table to fix. But there are many obstacles in the way: lack of money, her parents’s over-protective attitude, and a most annoying distraction in class called Arsalan.

Bipathu and a Very Big Dream, Anita Nair, Puffin

When school reopens in the village of Kaikurussi after the pandemic lockdown nine-year-old Bipathu makes new friends – Madama a blind lady who has moved to the village, Maash a neighbour, Rahul a boy who loves football, and Duggu a rescued puppy.

The Case of the Vanishing Gods, Mallika Ravikumar, Talking Cub

In the town of Maulsari, a shocking burglary has shaken up everyone. Valuable jewellery and a beautiful antique idol of Goddess Mahalsa Narayani have been spirited away. Who could have carried out this audacious theft?

A Children’s History of India in 100 Objects, Devika Cariapa, Puffin

Spanning the entirety of Indian history, from prehistoric to contemporary times, the 100 objects and artefacts chronicled in this book have shaped our present.

Mommies, Richa Jha and Priya Sebastian, Pickle Yolk Books

Challenging the conventional views of motherhood that reduce moms to a rule-bound gendered identity and role, Mommies encourages readers to explore and question their own as well as larger social norms.

From Makaras to Manticores: Around India in 100 Mythical Creatures, CG Salamander and Sheena Deviah, Hachette India

A book about travels across India, documenting a hundred mythical creatures that deeply fascinate us.

Are There Bun Shops in the Jungles of India? and Other Secret Stories from History, Nandini Nayar, Hachette India

When was the last time the mighty tiger roamed freely under the open sky? What is the sleek leopard from sunny India doing in freezing England? How will the huge rhinoceros stay in a small, cramped cage? And why is the enormous elephant eating tiny buns in the zoo?

The Dog with Two Names: Stories that Celebrate Diversity, Nandita Da Cunha, Talking Cub

Three best friends from the gullies of Mumbai have a falling out. Then a deadly cloudburst threatens their neighbourhood. Will they be able to overcome their religious differences and unite in the face of danger?

The Misadventures of a Diamond Thief, Lubaina Bandukwala, Puffin

Sahabzada Hawa Singh Rafu Chakkar (Rafu), a descendant of the legendary time-travelling, thieving djinns, wants to abandon the family tradition of stealing jewels to pursue his true passion – cooking. However, when the king of djinns tasks him with a mission to steal the Shah-i-Noor diamond in the newly built city of Haiderabad, Rafu reluctantly accepts. His secret agenda? The diamond is his ticket to his dream.

Business and management

Accelerating India’s Development: A State-led Roadmap For Effective Governance, Karthik Muralidharan, Penguin India

The book argues that building an effective state is the great unfinished task of Indian democracy, for quality public services are key to translating the political equality of every vote into greater equality of opportunity for all Indians.

AI Rising: India’s Artificial Intelligence Growth Story, Leslie D’Monte and Jayanth N Kolla, Jaico Publishing House

The book helps the reader understand and appreciate the progress that AI has made in India.

Exprovement: Exponential Improvements Through Converging Parallels, Hersh Haladker and Raghunath Anant Mashelkar, Penguin India

Leaders should keep in mind that “obvious” comparisons can, at best, lead to improvement, whereas “unexpected” ones can lead to exponential improvement and perpetuate a legacy of innovation.

Farmer Sutra: The True Story of How a City Dweller Realized Her Farm Dream, Kalpana Manivannan, Shrishti Publishers

A mother of two teenage kids, disillusioned by the modern food system and wanting to opt out of it. But how? She turns to farming for her own family.

Inside the Boardroom: How Behaviour Trumps Rationality, R Gopalakrishnan and Tulsi Jayakumar, Rupa Publications

The book explores the downfall of some major companies in the light of directors’ behaviour and its impact on corporate governance.

Lilliput Land: How Small Is Driving India’s Mega Consumption Story, Rama Bijapurkar, Penguin India

The story of how small suppliers ooze innovation and customer intimacy and are powered by digital infrastructure that does billions of unique and small transactions every day.

Mastering the Data Paradox: The Key to Winning in the AI Age, Nitin Seth, Penguin India

The convergence of these AI and data, with data as the common denominator, holds immense promise and the opportunities are boundless.

The Eight Per Cent Solution: A Strategy for India’s Growth, Nikhil Gupta, Bloomsbury India

An economy consists of four participants – households, corporate, government and external – and just three activities: consumption, savings/investment and external trade. However, the lack of attention to the finances of the household sector and the unlisted corporate sector in India is shocking. As also is the gap between the real and the financial economy.

Unfiltered: The CEO and the Coach, Ana Lueneburger and Saurabh Mukherjea, Penguin India

The book, through its candour, helps readers fully grasp the life-changing impact that coaching can have.

When the Chips Are Down: A Deep Dive Into a Global Crisis, Pranay Kotasthane and Abhiram Manchi, Bloomsbury India

This book is a comprehensive overview of this “meta-critical” technology of semiconductors, or chips.

Information about the longlisted books has been sourced from publishers’ blurbs.