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The 2024 Crossword Book Awards longlists were announced on October 7, 2024: ten titles in each of five categories—Fiction, Nonfiction, Translations, Children’s, and Business and Management. Below are all 50 books, their authors, publishers where reported, and brief descriptions drawn from publisher blurbs, not independent reviews. Scroll’s announcement also named the category juries and set dates for the shortlist and ceremony.
How to read the longlists
The titles below are grouped by the five award categories and are not presented as a ranking. The descriptions paraphrase publisher-provided blurbs reported by Scroll; inclusion on a longlist is not a review or an indication of sales or critical standing. For Translations, the original language and translator are included. One Fiction entry, Can’t, had no publisher specified in the report.
Fiction
- History’s Angel — Anjum Hasan, Bloomsbury India. History teacher Alif’s encounter with a student unsettles his job and personal life.
- Never, Never Land — Namita Gokhale, Speaking Tiger Books. After reaching a personal and professional dead end, Iti retreats to a childhood cottage in the Kumaon Himalayas, where her elderly grandmother and companion are with her.
- The Memoirs of Valmiki Rao — Lindsay Pereira, Penguin India. A retired postman recalls the upheaval around the fall of the Babri Masjid and its effects on people he knew.
- The East Indian — Brinda Charry, HarperCollins India. Tony, an indentured Indian in the New World, encounters humour and tragedy in a story framed in part by A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
- The Gallery — Manju Kapur, Penguin India. After an art gallery opens, women negotiate desire, marriage, art, property, value, and self-expression.
- Quarterlife — Devika Rege, HarperCollins India. Young characters grapple with identity politics, corporate ambitions, idealism, and contemporary India’s complexities.
- Can’t — Shinie Antony; publisher not specified in the report. A woman in her seventies sets out with a seventeen-year-old boy to find her husband’s former lovers.
- Chronicle of an Hour and a Half — Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari, Westland. A rumour circulated through WhatsApp messages contributes to violence in a village.
- Tall Tales By a Small Dog — Omair Ahmad, Speaking Tiger Books. A human narrator considers stories told by Kallu, a street dog in Gorakhpur.
- Shakchunni — Arnab Ray, Hachette India. Set during the Great Famine in Bengal, the story follows the fortunes of the Banerjee family.
Nonfiction
- From Phansi Yard: My Year with the Women of Yerawada — Sudha Bharadwaj, Juggernaut. An account of her time in the high-security Phansi Yard of Yerawada Jail, 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. Stories of eight athletes from independent India, with varied social and geographic backgrounds.
- City on Fire: A Boyhood in Aligarh — Zeyad Masroor Khan, HarperCollins India. A coming-of-age memoir about religious violence in the 1990s and the author’s experience of being othered because of his faith.
- Swadeshi Steam, VO Chidambaram Pillai and the Battle against the British Maritime Empire — A. R. Venkatachalapathy, Penguin India. An account of lawyer V. O. Chidambaram Pillai and his challenge to British maritime power.
- A Part Apart: The Life and Thought of BR Ambedkar — Ashok Gopal, Navayana. Examines Ambedkar’s intellectual development through his writings, speeches, letters, and reading.
- Mother Cow, Mother India: A Multispecies Politics of Dairy in India — Yamini Narayanan, Navayana. A multispecies ethnography that treats animals as political subjects and examines connected systems of power.
- Anger Management: The Troubled Diplomatic Relationship between India and Pakistan — Ajay Bisaria, Aleph Book Company. A study combining scholarship, memoir, history, and the author’s diplomatic experience.
- Being Hindu, Being Indian: Lala Lajpat Rai’s Ideas of Nationhood — Vanya Vaidehi Bhargav, Penguin India. An examination of Lala Lajpat Rai’s nationalist thought.
- Marginlands: Indian Landscapes on the Brink — Arati Kumar-Rao, Pan Macmillan India. Documents communities and landscapes affected by disregarded warnings and decisions.
- Fire on the Ganges: Life Among the Dead in Banares — Radhika Iyengar, HarperCollins India. Looks at the Dom community, cremation work on Banaras’s ghats, and the city’s history.
Translations
- Beneath the Simolu Tree — Sarmishtha Pritam, translated from Assamese by Ranjita Biswas; Simon and Schuster India. Paridhi grows up amid domestic violence and conservative expectations in rural Assam.
- Boy, Unloved — Damodar Mauzo, translated from Konkani by Jerry Pinto; Speaking Tiger Books. Vipin grows up isolated under a cruel father’s control and begins to read voraciously.
- I Named My Sister Silence — Manoj Rupda, translated from Hindi by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar; Westland. A young man searches for his missing sister and encounters people who control and profit from land.
- Dudiya: In Your Burning Land — Vishwas Patil, translated from Marathi by Nadeem Khan; Niyogi Books. Election observer Dilip Pawar’s posting in Chhattisgarh changes his outlook during the two months before election results.
- Mithun Number Two — Jayant Kaikini, translated from Kannada by Tejaswini Niranjana; Westland. Stories find moments of transcendence amid the routines of Mumbai.
- Fire Bird — Perumal Murugan, translated from Tamil by Janani Kannan; Penguin India. Muthu leaves home with his wife and children after a division of family land leaves him with little.
- Sakina’s Kiss — Vivek Shanbhag, translated from Kannada by Srinath Perur; Penguin India. Venkat’s quiet life changes when two young men arrive claiming business with his daughter.
- A Woman Burnt — Imayam, translated from Tamil by G. J. V. Prasad; Simon and Schuster India. Revathi, an engineer who marries against her family’s wishes, faces social constraints as her life unravels.
- Maria Just Maria — Sandhya Mary, translated from Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil; HarperCollins India. After her grandfather’s death, Maria stops speaking and is in a psychiatric hospital as she begins reconnecting with reality.
- Fruits of the Barren Tree — Lekhnath Chhetri, translated from Nepali by Anurag Basnet; Penguin India. Set in late-1980s Darjeeling amid violent Gorkhaland politics.
Children’s
- Zen — Shabnam Minwala, Duckbill Books. Two girls named Zainab, living in 1935 and 2019, contend with social expectations and political controversy.
- The Henna Start-Up — Andaleeb Wajid, Duckbill Books. Abir Maqsood juggles career ambitions, earning money, family constraints, and a classmate.
- Bipathu and a Very Big Dream — Anita Nair, Puffin. Nine-year-old Bipathu makes new friends when school reopens in her village after lockdown.
- The Case of the Vanishing Gods — Mallika Ravikumar, Talking Cub. A burglary in Maulsari involves jewellery and an antique idol of Goddess Mahalsa Narayani.
- A Children’s History of India in 100 Objects — Devika Cariapa, Puffin. Presents Indian history through one hundred objects and artefacts.
- Mommies — Richa Jha and Priya Sebastian, Pickle Yolk Books. Challenges conventional expectations of motherhood.
- From Makaras to Manticores: Around India in 100 Mythical Creatures — C. G. Salamander and Sheena Deviah, Hachette India. A journey through stories of one hundred mythical creatures associated with India.
- Are There Bun Shops in the Jungles of India? and Other Secret Stories from History — Nandini Nayar, Hachette India. Uses questions about animals and history to introduce stories from India’s past.
- The Dog with Two Names: Stories that Celebrate Diversity — Nandita Da Cunha, Talking Cub. Three Mumbai friends face a falling out and a dangerous cloudburst, with religious differences at issue.
- The Misadventures of a Diamond Thief — Lubaina Bandukwala, Puffin. Rafu, a djinn descendant who would rather cook than steal, is sent on a jewel-theft mission.
Business and Management
- Accelerating India’s Development: A State-led Roadmap For Effective Governance — Karthik Muralidharan, Penguin India. Argues that an effective state and quality public services are central to equal opportunity.
- AI Rising: India’s Artificial Intelligence Growth Story — Leslie D’Monte and Jayanth N. Kolla, Jaico Publishing House. An introduction to the progress of artificial intelligence in India.
- Exprovement: Exponential Improvements Through Converging Parallels — Hersh Haladker and Raghunath Anant Mashelkar, Penguin India. Argues that unexpected comparisons can help drive larger improvements and innovation.
- Farmer Sutra: The True Story of How a City Dweller Realized Her Farm Dream — Kalpana Manivannan, Shrishti Publishers. A city dweller disillusioned with the food system turns to farming for her family.
- Inside the Boardroom: How Behaviour Trumps Rationality — R. Gopalakrishnan and Tulsi Jayakumar, Rupa Publications. Examines corporate failures through directors’ behaviour and corporate governance.
- Lilliput Land: How Small Is Driving India’s Mega Consumption Story — Rama Bijapurkar, Penguin India. Describes small suppliers, customer intimacy, innovation, and digital infrastructure.
- Mastering the Data Paradox: The Key to Winning in the AI Age — Nitin Seth, Penguin India. Discusses the relationship between AI and data and its potential.
- The Eight Per Cent Solution: A Strategy for India’s Growth — Nikhil Gupta, Bloomsbury India. Discusses participants and activities in an economy and gaps in attention to household and unlisted corporate finances.
- Unfiltered: The CEO and the Coach — Ana Lueneburger and Saurabh Mukherjea, Penguin India. Presents coaching through the authors’ account of its impact.
- When the Chips Are Down: A Deep Dive Into a Global Crisis — Pranay Kotasthane and Abhiram Manchi, Bloomsbury India. An overview of semiconductors and their global significance.
Juries and award schedule
The five juries named in the October 7 announcement were:
- Fiction: Manjula Narayan, Prayaag Akbar, and Somak Ghoshal.
- Nonfiction: TCA Raghavan, Anuradha Sengupta, and Kaveree Bamzai.
- Translations: Arshia Sattar, Nandini Nair, and Malashri Lal.
- Children’s: Paro Anand, Parvati Sharma, and Bulbul Sharma.
- Business and Management: Khozem Merchant, Shaili Chopra, and Sriram.
At the time of the longlist announcement, the shortlist was scheduled for November 8, 2024, and the ceremony for December 8, 2024, in Mumbai. Scroll’s November 8 follow-up confirms that the five-book shortlists were announced as scheduled. The announced prize for each winning author was ₹50,000.
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