Crossword Book Awards 2025: Longlists of ten books in five categories announced

The ten-book longlists in the five jury categories – Fiction, Nonfiction, Translation, Children’s, Business and Management – for the 2025 Crossword Book Awards have been announced. The shortlist will be announced in October, and the awards ceremony will be held in Mumbai in December. The winning authors will get a cash prize of Rs 50,000 each.

Each category is judged by a separate jury. The jury for Fiction comprises Navtej Sarna, Sunil Sethi, and Vaishna Roy. The Nonfiction jury consists of Satish Padmanabhan, Mandira Nayar, and Milan Vaishnav. Translations are being judged by Poonam Saxena, S Prasannarajan, and Fathima EV. The judges for Children’s books are Anita Nair, Deepak Dalal, and Deepa Agarwal. Mitali Mukherjee, Sonu Bhasin, and Sruthijith KK are the jury for Business and Management.

The Popular Awards shortlist will be announced on September 30, where readers can vote for their favourite books.

Here are the longlists:

Nonfiction

• Golwalkar: The Myth Behind the Man, The Man Behind the Machine, Dhirendra K Jha, Simon and Schuster India

• Gods, Guns, and Missionaries: The Making Of The Modern Hindu Identity, Manu S Pillai, Penguin Random House India

• Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism, Ramachandra Guha, HarperCollins Publishers India

• The Lucky Ones: A Memoir, Zara Chowdhary, Westland

• Fallen City: A Double Murder, Political Insanity, and Delhi’s Descent from Grace, Sudeep Chakravarti, Aleph Book Company

• Iconoclast: A Reflective Biography of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, Anand Teltumbde, Penguin Random House India

• From The King’s Table to Street Food: A Food History of Delhi, Pushpesh Pant, Speaking Tiger Books

• Everyday Reading: Middlebrow Magazines and Book Publishing in Post-Independence India, Aakriti Mandhwani, Speaking Tiger Books

• Lōal Kashmir: Love and Longing in a Torn Land, Mehak Jamal, HarperCollins Publishers India

• The Identity Project: The Unmaking of a Democracy, Rahul Bhatia, Westland

Fiction

• Mother India, Prayaag Akbar, HarperCollins Publishers India

• The Artful Murders: A Ragini Malhotra Mystery, Feisal Alkazi, Speaking Tiger Books

• Great Eastern Hotel, Ruchir Joshi, HarperCollins Publishers India

• Girls Who Stray, Anisha Lalvani, Bloomsbury India

• An Unholy Drought, Madhulika Liddle, Speaking Tiger Books

• Rising Sons, Kavery Nambisan, Penguin Random House India

• Across the River, Bhaichand Patel, Speaking Tiger Books

• The Fertile Earth, Ruthvika Rao, Penguin Random House India

• Muses Over Mumbai, Murzban F Shroff, Bloomsbury India

• Girl With the Seven Lives, Vikas Swarup, Simon & Schuster India

Translations

• One and Three Quarters, Shrikant Bojewar, translated from Marathi by Vikrant Pande, Westland

• Unlove Story, Sudipto Pal, translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha, Seagull Books

• The Day the Earth Bloomed, Manoj Kuroor, translated from Malayalam by J Devika, Bloomsbury India

• On the Other Side, Rahman Abbas, translated from Urdu by Riyaz Latif, Penguin Random House India

• Mudritha, Jissa Jose, translated from Malayalam by Jayashree Kalathil, HarperCollins Publishers India

• A Temple of No Gods, Manav Kaul, translated from Hindi by Sayari Debnath, Penguin Random House India

• White Blood, Nanak Singh, translated from Punjabi by Dilraj Singh Suri, Hachette India

• Our City, That Year, Geetanjali Shree, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, Penguin Random House India

• You, M Mukundan, translated from Malayalam by Nandakumar K, Westland

• The Owl, the River and the Valley, Arupa Patangia Kalita, translated from Assamese by Mitra Phukan, Penguin Random House India

Business and Management

• Ratan Tata: A Life, Thomas Mathew, HarperCollins Publishers India

• Just a Mercenary?: Notes From My Life and Career, Duvvuri Subbarao, Penguin Random House India

• Behold the Leviathan: The Unusual Rise of Modern India, Saurabh Mukherjea and Nandita Rajhansa, Penguin Random House India

• The Dirty Dozen: The Untold Stories of India’s Twelve Biggest Corporate Gangsters, N Sundaresha Subramanian, PanMacmillan India

• Money, Myths and Mantras: The Ultimate Investment Guide, Devina Mehra, Penguin Random House India

• Sky High: The Untold Story of IndiGo, Tarun Shukla, HarperCollins Publishers India

• Tarmac to Towers: The India Infrastructure Story, Pratap Padode (Westland Books)

• The Tanishq Story: Inside India’s No 1 Jewellery Brand, CK Venkataraman, Juggernaut

• A Fly on the RBI Wall: An Insider’s View of the Central Bank, Alpana Killawala, Rupa Publications India)

• Amrut, the Great Churn: The Global Story of India’s First Single Malt, Sriram Devatha, Westland

Children’s Books

• The Wall Friends Club, Varsha Seshan, illustrated by Denise Antao, HarperCollins Publishers India

• The School for Bad Girls, Madhurima Vidyarthi, Duckbill

• Woebegone’s Warehouse of Words, Payal Kapadia, Hachette India

• 565: The Dramatic Story of Unifying India,Mallika Ravikumar (Hachette India)

• Everything Sucks, Andaleeb Wajid, Talking Cub Books

• Kushti Kid, Vibha Batra, Scholastic India

• Ajay of Agumbe and the Signal Snake, Zai Whitaker, illustrated by Rajiv Eipe, Pratham Books

• The Book of Emperors, Ashwitha Jayakumar, illustrated by Nikhil Gulati, Penguin Random House India

• The Boy with a Hundred Questions, Nalini Ramachandran, illustrated by Shruti Hemani, HarperCollins Publishers India

• The Body in the Swimming Pool, Shabnam Minwalla, Talking Cub Books

Disclosure: Arunava Sinha is the editor of the Books and Ideas section of Scroll. Sayari Debnath is a senior writer at Scroll.