On Friday, Oxford Bookstore announced Devangana Das as the winner of the 2025 Oxford Bookstore Book Cover Prize. She won the prize for designing Conversations with Aurangzeb, written by Charu Nivedita and translated from the Tamil by Nandini Krishnan. It was published by HarperCollins India. She received a trophy and a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh.
This year’s jury is chaired by museum curator Alka Pande and comprises author and member of parliament Shashi Tharoor, installation artist Samar Jodha, Director Information Services South Asia Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Anja Riedeberger, authors Shobhaa De and Kunal Basu, and director of the Apeejay Surrendra Group Priti Paul.
She was previously shortlisted for the Prize in 2018 for The House That Spoke (Zuni Chopra, Penguin Random House India) and longlisted in 2019 and 2024 for Master on Masters (Amjad Ali Khan, Penguin Random House India) and The Living Mountain (Amitav Ghosh, Harper Collins India), respectively.
Dash is a bookmaker, art director, and design educator. She is also an author-illustrator. Her book The Jungle Radio: Birdsongs of India (Penguin Random House India, 2019), received accolades from the South Asia Book Award (2020), Comic Con Awards (2020) and Publishing Next Industry Awards (2019), among others.
The other designers on the shortlist were:
Sharanya Kunnath for Epicurious: The Greatest Epics and Classics from Around the World and India, Sreelata Menon, Hachette India
Samar Bansal for Feathers, Fools and Farts: Manipuri Folktales Retold, L Somi Roy and Thangjam Hindustani Devi, Puffin India
Amit Malhotra for For Now, It Is Night, Hari Krishna Kaul, translated from the Kashmiri by various, HarperCollins India
Rashmi Gupta for How to Love in Sanskrit, Anusha Rao and Suhas Mahesh, HarperCollins India
Edmund Spitz for Quarterlife: A Novel, Devika Rege, HarperCollins India
