Kalinga Literary Festival Book Awards for 2024 announces longlists in seven categories

The Kalinga Literary Festival (KLF) announced the longlisted titles in English for the annual KLF Book Awards in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, children’s literature, business, translations, and debut works. The shortlist will be revealed on January 30 and the winners will be announced on February 15 in New Delhi. Additionally, the Book Prizes will be awarded for Hindi, Sanskrit, and Odia-language books.

Here are the longlists:

Fiction

• Red River, Somnath Batabyal, Context

• Mother India, Prayaag Akbar, Harper Collins India

• 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

• Beneath the Devil Tree: Malabar 1921, Anjana Varma, Vitasta

• Devadasi, Sangeeta Bahadur, Parchment Publications

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

• Iru: The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve, Urmilla Deshpande and Thiago Pinto Barbosa, Speaking Tiger Books

• The Jallianwala Bagh Journals, Sarmistha Dutta Gupta, Jadavpur University Press

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

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

• The Diary of Manu Gandhi (1946-1948), Tridip Suhrud, Oxford University Press

• Rukhmabai: The Life and Times of a Child Bride Turned Rebel-Doctor, Sudhir Chandra, Pan Macmillan India

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

• The Absent Colour, Anil, Navayana

• The Dust Draws Its Face on the Wind, Avinash Shrestha, translated from Nepali by Rohan Chhetri, HarperCollins India

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

• Freerain, Easterine Kire, Penguin India

• How to Love in Sanskrit, Anusha Rao and Suhas Mahesh, HarperCollins India

• The Notbook of Kabir: Thinner than Water, Fiercer than Fire, Anand, Penguin India

Debut book

• 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 Lucky Ones: A Memoir, Zara Chaudhary, Westland

• The Foresighted Ambedkar, Anurag Bhaskar, Penguin India

• Code Dependent, Madhumita Murgia, Picador (Pan Macmillan)

• Chronicle of an Hour and a Half, Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari, Westland

Translation

• Maria, Just Maria, Sandhya Mary, translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil, HarperCollins India

• The Solitude of a Shadow, Devibharathi, translated from Tamil by N Kalyan Raman, HarperCollins India

• Ten Days of the Strike: Selected Stories, Sandipan Chattopadhyay, translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha, HarperCollins India

• Our City That Year, Geetanjali Shree, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, Penguin India

• Boy Unloved, Damodar Mauzo, translated from Konkani by Jerry Pinto, Speaking Tiger Books

• Limited/Unlimited, Sankar translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha, Bloomsbury India

• The Day the Earth Bloomed, Manoj Kuroor, translated from Malayalam by J Devika, Bloomsbury India

• The Essential Ghalib, Anisur Rahman, HarperCollins India

Business books

• Digital Fortunes: A Value Investor’s Guide to the New Economy, Smarak Swain, Bloomsbury India

• Capitalism to Peopleism: Inspiring a Leadership Transformation, Ravi Chaudhry, Simon and Schuster India

• Amrut – the Great Churn: The Global Story of India’s First Single Malt, Sriram Devatha Westland

• Lilliput Land: How Small is Driving India’s Mega Consumption Story, Rama Bijapurkar, Penguin India

• The Tanishq Story, CK Venkataraman, Juggernaut

• Dharmanomics: An Indigenous and Sustainable Economic Model, Sriram Balasubramanian, Bloomsbury India

• Insightful Inc.: How to Build an Insightful and Consumer-centric Organization, Manish Makhijani, Jaico Publishing House

• Let’s Talk Legacy, Monika Halan, HarperCollins India

Children’s literature

• The Mystery of the Missing Geometry Boxes, Vidya Varadarajan, Scholastic India

• The Boy with a Hundred Questions, Nalini Ramachandran, HarperCollins India

• Why the Apple Falls, Swagata Deb and Sandipan Deb, Juggernaut

• Laxmi Panda: The Story of Netaji’s Youngest Spy, Savie Karnel, Westland

• The Great Indian Nature Trail, Rohan Chakravarty and Bijal Vachharajani Juggernaut

• Save the Solar System with Nye and Friends, Tanya Gawdi, Rupa Publications

• The Couch Potato Who Said Ouch and Other Funny Stories, Khyrunnisa A, Westland

Disclosure: Arunava Sinha is the editor of Books and Ideas section of Scroll.