Josy Joseph, Sujit Saraf, Karan Johar and Sadhguru were among the winners of this year’s Crossword Book Awards, announced at the Royal Opera House in Mumbai on Thursday. The winners of both jury and popular choice awards were announced for 10 categories.
Currently in its 15th edition, the Crossword Book Awards were founded as an Indian counterpart to international literary wards, such as the Man Booker Prize and Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. They come with a cash prize of Rs 3 lakh for winners in the jury award category and Rs 1 lakh for winners in the popular choice category.
While filmmaker Karan Johar won the popular choice award for his book An Unsuitable Boy, written with Poonam Saxena, yoga guru Sadhguru won in both the health and fitness and non-fiction categories.
Josy Joseph’s investigative book about the collusion between politicians, bureaucrats and corporate India, A Feast of Vultures, was named the best book in the non-fiction category of the jury awards. “This is a book about the truth about our nation,” the jury said while announcing the prize. “It confirms what we already suspect and shocks us further by unraveling the workings of the Indian system.”
The jury chose Sujit Saraf’s novel about the Marwari experience Harilal and Sons as the best fiction title for its “smooth and unhurried narrative”, “vivid and credible” characters. They called it “the Marwari novel in English that everybody was waiting for”.
The final award for the evening for lifetime achievement was given to the prolific Padma Shri-winning writer Sudha Murthy, who has authored 28 books that have sold over four lakh copies. “This is something independent of Infosys and Narayan Murthy, my own writing,” she said while accepting the award.
Here is the complete list of winners:
Popular Choice Awards
- Fiction: Our Impossible Love, Durjoy Datta (Penguin Random House India)
- Non-fiction: Inner Engineering, Sadhguru (Penguin Random House India)
- Business and management: The Target, Shantanu Guha Ray (Authorsupfront)
- Biography: An Unsuitable Boy, Karan Johar and Poonam Saxena (Penguin Random House India)
- Health and fitness: A Taste of Well-Being, Isha Foundation (Harper Collins India)
- Children’s writing: The Storm Bringer, Archita Mishra (The Write Place)
Jury Awards
- Fiction: Harilal and Sons, Sujit Saraf (Speaking Tiger)
- Non-fiction: A Feast of Vultures, Josy Joseph (Harper Collins India)
- Children’s writing: Muezza and Baby Jaan, Anita Nair (Penguin Random House India)
- Translations: A Preface to Man, Subash Chandran, translated from Malayalam by Fathima EV (Harper Perennial India)
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