Banaras Lit Fest announces winners for 2025 Book Awards in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translation

The Banaras Lit Fest has announced the winners in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and translation categories for its 2025 book awards. Besides English, the awards were also given to Hindi language books.

The winners will receive a cash prize of Rs 51,000, along with a certificate and a trophy, during the festival, which will be held in Varanasi between March 7 and March 9.

In addition to the book awards, the Bhartendu Harishchandra Lifetime Achievement Award of Rs 1 lakh was given to Hindi writer Kashinath Singh, and the Kalidas Award for Scheduled Indian Languages of Rs 51,000 was given to writer Radha Vallabh Tripathi.

The English winners

• Ruskin Bond Award for Fiction: The Patient in Bed Number 12, Raj Kamal Jha, Penguin India

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

• Sarojini Naidu Award for Poetry: I’ll Have It Here: Poems, Jeet Thayil, HarperCollins India

• Rabindranath Tagore Award for Translation: The Keeper of Desolation: Stories, Chandan Pandey, translated from the Hindi by Sayari Debnath, HarperCollins India

The Hindi winners

• Kabir Award for Poetry: आत्मद्रोह, आर चेतनक्रांति, राजकमल प्रकाशन

• Rahul Sankrityayan Award for Nonfiction: गार्जियनता , व्योमेश शुक्ल, रुख़ पब्लिकेशन

• Premchand Award for Fiction, आउशवित्ज: एक प्रेम कथा, गरिमा श्रीवास्तव, वाणी प्रकाशन

• Mahadevi Verma Award for Translation: नये भारत की दीमक लगी शहतीरें , परकाला प्रभाकर, अनुवाद: व्यालोक पाठक, राजकमल प्रकाशन

Disclosure: Sayari Debnath is a Senior Writer at Scroll.

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