NEW DELHI: The Ramnath Goenka Sahithya Samman (RNGSS) 2025 is homebound. In the 1930s, Ramnath Goenka, a doyen of the Indian print industry and the visionary behind The New Indian Express (TNIE) Group, conceived the idea of a newspaper in Chennai that would be synonymous with fearless journalism. He also seeded the idea of an award for timeless literature, and for giving a platform to young writers who were thinking outside the grid, building new worlds with the power of imagination, with new ideas, styles, narratives and courage.
Announced at the Odisha Literary Festival 2023, and after a strong launch in Delhi in 2024, the RNGSS heads to Chennai, the TNIE group’s headquarters. Four awards—for Lifetime Achievement, Best Fiction, Best Non-Fiction and Best Debut – will be given at a prestigious ceremony in Chennai on Friday. Vice President of India, C P Radhakrishnan, will grace the occasion as Chief Guest, at a function to be attended by the city’s intelligentsia and who’s who.
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.
For the third edition of 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 winners were shortlisted at a meeting in Delhi in October, attended by the internal and external jury. Each book was closely studied, discussed and fought for to arrive at the winners.
The jury was chaired by author and former diplomat Pavan Varma; author Githa Hariharan and economist Sanjeev Sanyal were the other external jury members.
From books on lesser-known public figures such as Irawati Karve, the Partition, the story of everywoman who struggles to find a foothold in the city to a study of rage and true crime—the mix this year showed Indian authors writing about India, the neighbourhood, the borderlands, and the urban sprawl with young and wise eyes, critical and social conscience, and a mature handling of their material. To us, all these books are winners.