Top News

The 2026 Kalinga Literary Festival Book Awards announces longlists in five categories
Scroll | March 17, 2026 4:40 PM CST

The Kalinga Literary Festival has announced its 2026 Book Awards longlist in five categories – Nonfiction, Fiction, Translated Fiction, Debut, and Poetry.

The shortlist will be announced in the second week of April and the awards ceremony will be held on May 8 in Delhi. The winning authors will receive a cash award of Rs 1 lakh.

Here is the complete longlist:

Nonfiction
  • The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir, Anand Teltumbde, Bloomsbury Publishing

  • The World After Gaza, Pankaj Mishra, Juggernaut Books

  • Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age, Vauhini Vara HarperCollins India

  • Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India, Srinath Raghavan, Penguin Random House India

  • Scamlands: Inside the Asian Empire of Fraud That Preys on the World, Snigdha Poonam Penguin Random House India

  • Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy, Penguin Random House India

  • Called by the Hills, Anuradha Roy, Hachette India

Fiction
  • Great Eastern Hotel, Ruchir Joshi, HarperCollins India

  • The Elsewhereans, Jeet Thayil, HarperCollins India

  • Railsong, Rahul Bhattacharya, Bloomsbury Publishing

  • Rising Sons, Kavery Nambisan, Penguin Random House India

  • The Beast Within, Rudraneil Sengupta, Westland Books

  • The Last Free Naga, Jim Wungramyao Kasom, Speaking Tiger Books

  • Absolute Jafar, Sarnath Banerjee, HarperCollins India

  • The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Kiran Desai, Penguin Random House India

Translated Fiction
  • Tiger Lessons, Sannapureddy Venkatarami Reddy, translated from the Telugu by Narasimha Kumar, Bloomsbury Publishing

  • The Dark Hours of the Night, Salma, translated from the Thamizh by GJV Prasad, Simon & Schuster India

  • Mudritha,Jissa Jose, translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil, HarperCollins India

  • Heart Lamp,Banu Mushtaq, translated from the Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, Penguin...

    Read more


READ NEXT
Cancel OK