5 min readUpdated: Sep 20, 2026 08:02 PM IST
The Crossword Book Awards are back for their landmark 20th edition, with an extensive longlist of 50 titles across fiction, non-fiction, translations, children’s books, and business and management. Jeet Thayil, Viswanathan Anand, Rahul Bhattacharya, Anuradha Roy, Shanta Gokhale and T M Krishna are among the authors nominated for the awards.
This week, we recommend one book from each category:
Absolute Jafar by Sarnath Banerjee
Beautiful and funny, Sarnath Banerjee’s semi-autobiographical graphic novel, Absolute Jafar, merits a place on any bookshelf. The protagonist, Brighu, a Delhi-based compulsive walker, marries Mahrukh, an artist from Karachi. Banerjee renders the unique absurdity of a couple spending years in India’s languorous administrative offices with deadpan humour. The marriage dissolves, but their son, Jafar, born in Berlin, inherits these fractured histories. His only link to his parents’ countries is the bedtime stories of jinns and street food his father tells him. A cheetah, labelled “the last migrant,” bookends the novel. Interspersed with nostalgic pop culture references, it is a meditation on walking, waiting, and the courage to keep moving, “even if it does not take you anywhere.” Published by HarperCollins India, the book is nominated in the Fiction category.
The Crossword Book Awards fiction longlist.
Scamlands by Snigdha Poonam
Anyone who has fielded a call demanding an OTP, or been warned of a “digital arrest,” will find Snigdha Poonam’s Scamlands both engaging and enlightening. Published by Penguin Random House India and nominated in the Non-fiction category, the book follows Poonam as she travels to the scam call centres of Jharkhand and the trafficking compounds of Myanmar, where young Indians are held captive and forced to defraud strangers online. The book is immersive without being sensational. It neither villainises nor victimises the fraudsters. Instead, it documents how caste, money and politics shape who ends up behind the phone, and why the empire keeps growing.
The Crossword Book Awards non-fiction longlist.
Tiger Lessons by Sannapureddy Venkatarami Reddy
In Tiger Lessons, published by Bloomsbury India and nominated in the Translations category, Sannapureddy Venkatarami Reddy introduces us to a world far removed from the urban hustle. This is a world where ecological wisdom passed down from ancestors is still needed to survive, where the lives of shepherds, sheep, tribes, and tigers are inexorably enmeshed. This is the story of Tiger Ravi, who hails from a golla family—a Telugu shepherd community whose traditional life is tied to herding sheep. His father and brother worked to ensure he would never have to live that life, but one summer, he finds himself driving the flock into the Nallamala hills of Andhra Pradesh, where famine has pushed the shepherds to graze. He is terrified of the forest. Every sound is a tiger, every vine a python. When a tiger begins hunting his herd, everything he knows is tested. As somebody who grew up near the Nallamala ranges, Reddy is familiar with the shepherds and their continuing plight. This novel was originally published in Telugu as Konda Polam. A rare novel that teaches geography, anthropology, biology and botany without ever feeling like a lesson, it is not a novel to be missed.
The Crossword Book Awards translation longlist.
Ancient Indians — Tony Joseph
Before humans, India belonged to giant rhinos, monster snakes and sabre-toothed cats. Then Homo sapiens arrived, and the struggle for food against beasts and each other began. Sixty-five thousand years later, more than a billion people live here. This children’s edition of Tony Joseph’s Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From, published by Juggernaut Publications and nominated in the Children’s Books category, takes young readers through that story, from fossils and bones to words and ruins. Archaeologist-turned-children’s author Devika Cariapa has adapted Joseph’s book to evoke wonder in children at a pace and level they can easily follow.
The Crossword Book Awards children’s longlist.
The Great Sanctions Hack by Urjit Patel
In his new book, Urjit Patel, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, argues that economic sanctions, which are America’s go-to geopolitical weapon, rarely achieve their goals and often punish the wrong parties. Published by Rupa Publications and nominated in the Business & Management category, Patel contends that secondary sanctions inflict hidden, long-term damage on innocent third countries such as India. Drawing on his experience at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, he shows how alternatives like the New Development Bank can help nations cope.
The Crosswords Award Business and Management longlist.
The Crossword Book Awards fiction longlist.
The Crossword Book Awards non-fiction longlist.
The Crossword Book Awards translation longlist.
The Crossword Book Awards children’s longlist.
The Crosswords Award Business and Management longlist.