2025 Kalinga Literary Festival Book Awards announces shortlists in 13 categories

The Kalinga Literary Festival has announced shortlists in seven categories in English and six in Hindi for the 4th Annual KLF Book Awards. This year the prizes will be awarded in the fiction, nonfiction, poetry, children’s literature, business, translation, and debut categories in English, and in the fiction, nonfiction, poetry, children’s literature, translation, and debut categories in Hindi.

The winners will be announced on February 15, and will win a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh for each category.

Here are the shortlisted books:

English Fiction

• Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Speaking Tiger Books

• Loot, Tania James, Penguin

• The Girl with the Seven Lives, Vikas Swarup, Simon and Schuster India

• The Enclave, Rohit Manchanda, Harper Collins India

English Nonfiction

• Gods, Guns, and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity, Manu S Pillai, Penguin India

• Tipu Sultan: The Saga of Mysore’s Interregnum (1760-1799), Vikram Sampath, Penguin India

• Imperial Games in Tibet, Dilip Sinha, Pan Macmillan India

• The Sherpa Trail: Stories from Darjeeling and Beyond, Nandini Purandare and Deepa Balsavar, Roli Books

English Poetry

• Yes, There Will Be Singing, Hamraaz, Westland

• I Don’t Love You Anymore, Rithvik Singh, Penguin India

• I’ll Have It Here, Jeet Thayil, HarperCollins India

• All These Streets We’ve Known By Heart, Siddharth Dasgupta, Red River Press

English Debut

• The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian, Neha Dixit, Juggernaut

• Glass Bottom, Sonali Prasad, Pan Macmillan India

• Girls Who Stray, Anisha Lalvani, Bloomsbury India

• The Foresighted Ambedkar, Anurag Bhaskar, Penguin India

English Translation

• Ten Days of the Strike: Selected Stories, Sandipan Chattopadhyay, translated from Bengali by…

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