CHENNAI: The New Indian Express’ Ramnath Goenka Sahithya Samman (RNGSS) awards for 2025 honoured four writers across the Lifetime Achievement, Fiction, Non-Fiction and Debut categories at an event here on Friday, with Vice President of India CP Radhakrishnan as chief guest.
The RNGSS 'Lifetime Achievement' award was conferred on Dr Chandrashekhara Kambara, one of India’s most revered literary figures.
A Kannada writer, thinker, playwright, folklorist and theatre activist, Kambara’s work has drawn deeply from folk traditions and oral histories to bridge the classical and the contemporary. Over decades, his writing, scholarship and cultural leadership have expanded the horizons of Kannada literature and Indian theatre, giving enduring form to voices and ethical questions often left outside the written canon.
The RNGSS 'Best Non-Fiction' award went to Sudeep Chakravarti for Fallen City: A Double Murder, Political Insanity, and Delhi’s Descent from Grace.
The book combines forensic reporting with moral urgency to examine the corrosion of civic institutions and the erosion of public reason in the national capital, using a chilling crime as its lens. Written with intellectual rigour and restraint, it avoids sensationalism, positioning non-fiction as both documentation and warning.
Subi Taba won the RNGSS 'Best Fiction' award for Tales from the Dawn-Lit Mountains: Stories from Arunachal Pradesh, a collection rooted in oral traditions and shaped by contemporary literary sensibility.
Through spare, evocative prose, the book explores memory, belonging, loss and resilience, giving voice to communities and landscapes rarely represented in Indian literature.
The RNGSS 'Best Debut' award was presented to Neha Dixit for The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian.
Through the life of an unnamed woman, the book traces the intersecting forces of gender, poverty and institutional power in contemporary India. Written with restraint, empathy and investigative clarity, it restores dignity to a life rendered invisible by neglect and silence.
The awards marked a homecoming for the RNGSS, which was conceived by Ramnath Goenka, the doyen of the Indian print industry and the visionary behind The New Indian Express (TNIE) Group.
In the 1930s, Goenka imagined not only a fearless newspaper rooted in Chennai, but also an award that would celebrate timeless literature while offering a platform to young writers experimenting with new ideas, styles and narratives.
Announced at the Odisha Literary Festival in 2023 and launched in Delhi in 2024, the third edition of the RNGSS was hosted at the TNIE’s headquarters in Chennai. This year, Manoj Kumar Sonthalia, Chairman and Managing Director of the TNIE Group, proposed combining Debut Fiction and Non-Fiction into a single Debut category, while retaining separate Fiction and Non-Fiction awards for established writers.
The longlisting process began in July, with submissions from senior editors across TNIE centres in New Delhi, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Odisha, alongside recommendations from publishers. Books released between July 2024 and June 2025 were eligible.
The winners were finalised at a jury meeting in Delhi in October after extensive discussion. The jury was chaired by author and former diplomat Pavan Varma, with author Githa Hariharan and economist Sanjeev Sanyal as external members.
The shortlisted works ranged from studies of lesser-known public figures and the Partition to urban narratives and true crime, reflecting Indian authors writing about the country, its borderlands and its cities with critical engagement and social conscience. To the organisers, all the shortlisted books were winners.