The Banaras Lit Fest has announced the shortlists for its 2026 Book Awards across multiple genres and Hindi and English languages.
The winners will be announced on January 21. The winner in each category will receive a cash prize of Rs 51,000, along with a trophy and a certificate, to be presented during the festival.
Here are the shortlisted books:
Ruskin Bond Award for Fiction
The World With Its Mouth Open, Zahid Rafiq, Penguin India
Muses Over Mumbai, Murzban S Shroff, Bloomsbury India
The Elsewherians: A Documentary Novel, Jeet Thayil, HarperCollins India
Our Friends in Good Houses, Rahul Pandita, HarperCollins India
Eden Abandoned: The Story of Lilith, Shinie Antony, Hachette India
Sarojini Naidu Award for Poetry
Freerain, Easterine Kire, Penguin India
The Gallery of Upside Down Women, Arundhati Subramaniam, Penguin India
The Hanuman Chalisa, Abhay K, Bloomsbury India
Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You, Meena Kandasamy, Juggernaut
So That You Know, Mani Rao, HarperCollins India
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Award for Nonfiction
Father Tongue, Motherland: The Birth of Language in South Asia, Peggy Mohan, Penguin India
Learning from Silence, Pico Iyer, Penguin India
The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian, Neha Dixit, Juggernaut
Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia, Sam Dalrymple, HarperCollins India
Believer’s Dilemma: Vajpayee and the Hindu Right’s Path to Power, 1977-2018, Abhishek Choudhary, Pan Macmillan India
Rabindranath Tagore Award for Translation
Limited / Unlimited, Sankar, translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha, Bloomsbury India
This Place of Mud and Bone, Sanjay Bista, translated from the Nepali by Anurag Basnet, Penguin India
The Dead Fish, Rajkamal Choudhary,...
