The 2025 Crossword Book Awards shortlist names 25 books: five each in Fiction, Non-fiction, Translation, Children’s Books, and Business and Management. Crossword Bookstores announced the lists on October 30, 2025. The announcement also said the ceremony was scheduled for December 3 in Mumbai, with Rs 50,000 for each winning author; it does not establish who won or whether the ceremony took place as planned.
2025 Crossword Book Awards shortlist by category
The titles, author credits, translators, illustrators, and publishers below are transcribed from Scroll’s October 30, 2025 report. The report also disclosed that Arunava Sinha, translator of Unlove Story, is Scroll’s Books and Ideas editor.
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
The Lucky Ones: A Memoir
Zara Chowdhary
Westland
Iconoclast: A Reflective Biography of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar
Anand Teltumbde
Penguin Random House India
Lōal Kashmir: Love and Longing in a Torn Land
Mehak Jamal
HarperCollins Publishers India
Fiction
Book
Author
Publisher
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
The Fertile Earth
Ruthvika Rao
Penguin Random House India
Translation
Book
Author and translation credit
Publisher
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
Mudritha
Jissa Jose; translated from Malayalam by Jayashree Kalathil
HarperCollins Publishers India
Our City, That Year
Geetanjali Shree; translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
Penguin Random House India
The Owl, the River and the Valley
Arupa Patangia Kalita; translated from Assamese by Mitra Phukan
Penguin Random House India
Business and Management
Book
Author
Publisher
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
Sky High: The Untold Story of IndiGo
Tarun Shukla
HarperCollins Publishers India
Children’s Books
Book
Author and illustration credit
Publisher
The Wall Friends Club
Varsha Seshan; illustrated by Denise Antao
HarperCollins Publishers India
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 Body in the Swimming Pool
Shabnam Minwalla
Talking Cub Books
What the announcement establishes
Crossword Bookstores CEO Aakash Gupta described the jury shortlist as books selected for originality, craft, and impact. The report names the five categories and lists five titles in each, but does not provide jury member names or voting rules. Its ceremony date and prize are reported as announcement details, not as confirmation of the event’s eventual outcome.
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