Kalinga Literary Festival Book Awards announces its 2026 shortlists in five categories

The Kalinga Literary Festival has announced the shortlists for its 2026 Book Awards in five categories – Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translation, and Debut. The winners will be announced in September 2026 and awards will be presented at the inaugural ceremony of KLF Indraprastha between October 3 and 4.

Here are the complete shortlists:

Nonfiction

• Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age, Vauhini Vara

• The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir, Anand Teltumbde

• Scamlands: Inside the Asian Empire of Fraud That Preys on the World, Snigdha Poonam

• Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy

Fiction

• Great Eastern Hotel, Ruchir Joshi

• The Elsewhereans, Jeet Thayil

• The Beast Within, Rudraneil Sengupta

• Absolute Jafar, Sarnath Banerjee

Poetry

• The City under the City, John Kinsella and Jeet Thayil

• So That You Know, Mani Rao

• My Life Closed Twice, Subhashini Kaligotla

• Folie à Deux, Jennifer Robertson

Translation

• Mudritha, Jissa Jose, translated from Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil

• Tiger Lessons, Sannapureddy Venkatarami Reddy, translated from Telugu by Narasimha Kumar;

• Nowhere People, Manoranjan Byapari, translated from Bengali by Anchita Ghatak

• Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi

Debut

• The World With Its Mouth Open, Zahid Rafiq

• The Dig: Keeladi and the Politics of India’s Past, Sowmiya Ashok

• Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia, Sam Dalrymple

• The Map Is Not the Territory: Poems, Aranya Padil