Literature Live announces 2024 winners of best books, poet laureate, and lifetime achievement awards

Literature Live! The Mumbai Litfest announced its Literary Awards (for fiction, nonfiction and business), Publisher of the Year award, Poet Laureate, and Lifetime Achievement award on November 17, the final day of the festival.

Here are the winners in each category:

Publisher of the year

• Bloomsbury India

Fiction book of the year

• History’s Angel, Anjum Husain, Bloomsbury India

• The Memoirs of Valmiki Rao, Lindsay Pereira, Penguin India

Nonfiction book of the year

• Intertidal: A Coast and Marsh Diary, Yuvan Aves, Bloomsbury India

Fiction best first book

• Hurda, Atharva Pandit, Bloomsbury India

Nonfiction best first book

• From Phansi Yard: My Year with the Women of Yerawada, Sudha Bharadwaj, Juggernaut

Business book of the year

• The Learning Trap: How Byju’s Took Indian Edtech for a Ride, Pradip K Saha, Juggernaut

Poet laureate

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra was declared the 2024 Poet Laureate. He is the author of four influential poetic tomes: Nine Enclosures, Distance in Statute Miles, Middle Earth and The Transfiguring Places. His most recent publication which encompasses three sections: The Book of Rahim and Other Poems, Ghalib, A Diary, and Book of Lahore is deeply evocative.

Previous Poet Laureates include Mamang Dai, Gieve Patel, Adil Jussawalla, Javed Akhtar, K Satchidanandan, Jayanta Mahapatra, Gulzar, Keki Daruwalla, Vikram Seth, and Joy Goswami.

Lifetime achievement award

Odia writer Pratibha Ray was awarded the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award. Ray’s debut novel Barsha Basanta Baishakha was published in 1974. Her magnum opus Yajnaseni, which followed in 1984, revolving around the character of Draupadi in the...

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