The 2025 Godrej Literature Live! Literary Awards recognized five books across fiction, nonfiction and business writing. Island by Sujit Saraf won Book of the Year—Fiction, and Penguin Random House India was named Publisher of the Year. The awards were presented on 9 November at the finale of Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest.
Who won the 2025 Mumbai LitFest book awards?
The five category winners, with their authors and publishers, were:
| Category | Winning book and author | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| Book of the Year—Fiction | Island — Sujit Saraf | Speaking Tiger |
| Best First Book—Fiction | The Fertile Earth — Ruthvika Rao | Penguin Random House India |
| Book of the Year—Non-Fiction | Golwalkar: The Myth Behind the Man, The Man Behind the Machine — Dhirendra K Jha | Simon and Schuster India |
| Best First Book—Non-Fiction | The Lucky Ones: A Memoir — Zara Chowdhary | Westland Books |
| Business Book of the Year | The Money Trap: Grand Fortunes and Lost Illusions Inside the Tech Bubble — Alok Sama | Pan Macmillan India |
The organizer’s 10 November 2025 festival recap lists these results. Penguin Random House India’s Publisher of the Year recognition is separate from the book-category awards, even though the company also published one of the winning books, The Fertile Earth.
Special recognitions
- The Godrej Literature Live! Lifetime Achievement Award went to Hindi novelist and poet Vinod Kumar Shukla.
- Gujarati poet Sitanshu Yashaschandra was named the festival’s Poet Laureate.
These special recognitions were announced alongside the category results in the organizer’s recap.
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When and where were the awards presented?
The awards were presented on 9 November 2025, at the finale of the festival’s 16th edition. Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest ran from 7 to 9 November at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Nariman Point, Mumbai. Scroll’s 10 November report also dates the announcement to 9 November.
The organizer said its 2025 festival drew “almost 20,000 visitors” and that more than 2,500 children attended the parallel Little Festival, which was for ages 8–14. These are attendance figures reported by the festival, not independently audited counts.
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Who judged the awards?
The official recap names the juries by area:
- Fiction: Akhil Katyal, Anil Menon, Dolly Thakore, K. Srilata and Shireen Mistry.
- Nonfiction: Ajit Ranade, Ayaz Memon, Jean Da Cunha, Nirupama Subramanian and Tina Nagpaul.
- Business: Alka Puri, Bhaskar Dasgupta, Kavita Hurry, Manisha Girotra and Sitaraman Shankar.
The organizer says the awards aim to recognize and encourage literary talent across genres, among both established and new writers. Its results and jury listings do not describe a scoring rubric or explain how the judging process worked, so the awards should not be read as a published ranking beyond the named category wins.
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