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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.
Non-fiction
| Book | Author | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| 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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