The year 2025 saw a revival of the book market, with several new titles cutting across fiction, nonfiction, history, children’s literature, and thought leadership making a strong impact and finding their way onto bestseller lists.
From compelling narratives and fresh voices to powerful memoirs and deeply researched works, these books captured reader attention and shaped conversations through the year.
Mother Mary Comes To Me – Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, this is a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’.
Born out of the onrush of memories and feelings provoked by her mother Mary’s death, this is the astonishing, often disturbing and surprisingly funny memoir of the Arundhati Roy’s life, from childhood to the present, from Kerala to Delhi.
With the scale, sweep and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity and warmth of her essays, this book is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace – a memoir like no other.
Our Living Constitution: A Concise Introduction & Commentary By Shashi Tharoor
With the clear-eyed scholarship, cogent arguments, and readable prose that are the hallmarks of his books, bestselling writer and leading public intellectual Shashi Tharoor provides readers with a compelling narrative about the world’s longest written national Constitution. He describes the various parts of the Constitution, beginning with its resounding preamble and then goes on to explain its historical roots. He explores the civic nationalism that animated India’s Founding Fathers, which in turn invested the Constitution with its progressiveness, pluralism, tolerance, liberalism, and concern for the individual. He analyses how it has been able to resist attempts by autocrats and religious fanatics to change its basic structure. However, the perils remain—in the twenty-first century, the growth of sectarianism and illiberalism has threatened to undermine Indian society, and the Constitution which undergirds it, and constant vigilance is necessary to ensure these threats to the idea of India do not succeed.
The Loneliness Of Sonia And Sunny – A Novel By KIran Deai
Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India. She fears that she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists.
Shattered Lands : Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia By Sam Dalrymple
Shattered Lands, for the first time, presents the whole story of how the Indian Empire was unmade. How a single, sprawling dominion became twelve modern nations. How maps were redrawn in boardrooms and on battlefields, by politicians in London and revolutionaries in Delhi, by kings in remote palaces and soldiers in trenches.
Its legacies include civil wars in Burma and Sri Lanka, ongoing insurgencies in Kashmir, Baluchistan, Northeast India, and the Rohingya genocide. It is a history of ambition and betrayal, of forgotten wars and unlikely alliances, of borders carved with ink and fire. And, above all, it is the story of how the map of modern Asia was made.
Sam Dalrymple’s stunning narrative is based on deep archival research, previously untranslated private memoirs, and interviews in English, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Konyak, Arabic and Burmese. From portraits of the key political players to accounts of those swept up in these wars and mass migrations, Shattered Lands is vivid, compelling, thought-provoking history at its best.
The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories By Salman Rushdie
From internationally renowned, award-winning author Salman Rushdie, a spellbinding exploration of life, death, and what comes into focus at the proverbial eleventh hour of life
Rushdie turns his extraordinary imagination to life’s final act with a quintet of stories that span the three countries in which he has made his work—India, England, and America—and feature an unforgettable cast of characters.
The New Icon: Savarkar and the Facts By Arun Shourie
What did Savarkar think of Hinduism, about our beliefs and ‘holy cows’, about the texts Hindus hold to be sacred? Have our people been suffused with Hindutva as Savarkar maintained? What sort of a State did he envisage? Is Savarkar being resurrected today to erase the one great inconvenience―Gandhiji?
In The New Icon, Arun Shourie delves deep into Savarkar’s books, essays, speeches, statements to answer these and other questions. He exhumes archives of the British government. He takes us through contemporary records. And unearths facts that will surprise you.
Memes For Mummyji: Making Sense of Post-Smartphone India By Santosh Desai
From selfies and what they mean to the travails of modern love and the new vocabulary of politics, Santosh Desai returns to chronicle the invisible revolutions of Indian life with his signature wit and insight. In Memes for Mummyji, he explores how the mobile phone – now as common as the pressure cooker – has quietly reshaped everything: how we shop, flirt, pray, protest, and parent.
This is not a book about technology. It’s about us. Our habits, our contradictions, our new-found freedoms – and the deep cultural software that still runs underneath. Warm, keenly perceptive and deeply human, this book, with essays drawn from over a decade of observation, is a love letter to the everyday theatre of Indian life in the digital age.
THE ONLY CITY: BOMBAY IN EIGHTEEN STORIES By Anindita Ghose
Featuring some of the best names in Indian fiction—both emerging and established—this extraordinary anthology frames the city through a range of vantage points. From the urchin lurking by Grant Road’s railway overbridge to the screenwriter prowling the dance bars in Andheri; from the gay man cruising in a Dadar local to the artist hovering by a studio across the Danda shore; from immigrant nurses and couples in love to runaway teenagers—every character carries a critical Bombay fragment. Bombay is the only city that can grant them dimension.
Like the megalopolis, this book of stories is sometimes coloured by romance and sometimes dark and dystopic; it can be whimsical, but it is always voracious. Put together by novelist and editor Anindita Ghose, The Only City is perhaps the finest mirror yet to the sole corner in India that has captivated resident and tourist, actor and stockbroker-but especially, the writer.
Mitāhāra: Food Wisdom From My Indian Kitchen by Rujuta Diwekar
In MITĀHĀRA, best-selling author and celebrity nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar takes you on a transformative, year-long journey rooted in the Indian philosophy of measured eating and balanced living. Blending ancient wisdom with modern science, this book is your essential companion to aligning your body and mind with the natural rhythm of the seasons.Ancient wisdom, modern relevance Discover the principles of mitāhāra – the Indian philosophy of measured eating – and how they align beautifully with today’s health needs.Eat with the seasons From mangoes in summer to root vegetables in winter, embrace seasonal produce just as our ancestors did – naturally and intuitively.Sustainability starts on your plate Learn how mindful eating extends beyond personal health to planetary well-being. What nourishes you can also nourish the Earth.Thoughtful, accessible, and deeply rooted in Indian tradition, MITĀHĀRA is more than just a book – it’s a way of life
Viksit Bharat: India @ 2047 By Aditya Pittie
What will India look like when it turns 100?
Viksit Bharat: India @2047 boldly answers this question with unmatched clarity, rigour, and national optimism.
Authored by Aditya Pittie, this landmark volume is a visionary, data-driven roadmap for India’s transformation into a fully developed, globally influential nation by the year 2047—its centenary of independence. Combining economic foresight, policy clarity, and strategic insight, the book charts India’s path to a $30+ trillion economy; ensuring growth that reaches every citizen. From fiscal reform and infrastructure to digital innovation, sustainability, and social inclusion, each chapter explores the core drivers of transformation.
