NEW DELHI: It’s literally a race to the finish. Narrowing down longlists is a time to spotlight books of the moment, books that matter, offering authors and their ideas a vital platform. It’s also a period of excitement and goal-setting for us and our readers.
The Ramnath Goenka Sahithya Samman (RNGSS) is named in honour of Ramnath Goenka, a doyen of the Indian print industry and the visionary behind The New Indian Express (TNIE) Group. Past recipients include Ruskin Bond and Perumal Murugan (for Lifetime Achievement), Devika Rege (Fiction), and Anirudh Kanisetti (Non-Fiction).
For the third edition of the RNGSS, the TNIE team began curating the longlist in July. Submissions poured in from senior editors across TNIE centres in New Delhi, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and Odisha. Publishers also sent in their recommendations. Books released between July 2024 and June 2025 were considered for nomination.
The 2025 edition of RNGSS will be awarded in four categories: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Debut, and Lifetime Achievement. This year, Manoj Kumar Sonthalia, Chairman and Managing Director of TNIE Group, proposed combining Debut Fiction and Non-Fiction into a single Debut category, while maintaining separate Fiction and Non-Fiction categories for more established writers.
In the Debut shortlist, central to Ramnath Goenka’s vision of encouraging new voices and cultivating reading habits among the younger generation, the nominated books are: The Fertile Earth by Ruthvika Rao (Penguin), a rare take on class not viewed through an ideological lens; The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian by Neha Dixit (Juggernaut), profiling a marginalised woman’s erased history; and Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia by Sam Dalrymple (HarperCollins), which offers a fresh perspective on the enduring legacy of Partition.
In the Non-Fiction shortlist are: The World After Gaza by Pankaj Mishra (Juggernaut), a lateral exploration of the Israel-Palestine conflict as 'a victim of the victim'; Mujib’s Blunders: The Powers and The Plot Behind His Killing by Manash Ghosh (Niyogi Books), a reflective analysis of the assassination of Bangladesh’s premier; The Remarkable Life of Irawati Karve by Urmilla Deshpande and Thiago Pinto Barbosa (Speaking Tiger), a retelling of the anthropologist and educationist’s extraordinary life; and Fallen City: A Double Murder, Political Insanity, and Delhi’s Descent from Grace by Sudeep Chakravarti, delving into the infamous Ranga-Billa case that shook Delhi nearly fifty years ago.
Shortlisted in the Fiction category are: Tales from the Dawn-Lit Mountains by Subi Taba (Penguin), a fresh voice from the Northeast portraying tribal life; Heart Lamp (Penguin) by International Booker winner Banu Mushtaq; and The Girl with the Seven Lives by Vikas Swarup (Simon & Schuster), an innovatively structured, kitschy thriller by the internationally bestselling author.
Winners of the 2025 RNGSS will be selected from the shortlist in a jury meeting on Monday, October 6. The jury is chaired by author and former diplomat Pavan Varma, with author Githa Hariharan and economist Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council.
The winners will be announced at the award ceremony in Delhi on 28 November.
