Alfred Prufrock measured his life in coffee spoons. Mine would be measured in books. "There is no happiness like mine," writes poet Mark Strand in 'Eating Poetry'.
It has been a steady diet of books through the year. They taste like joy. The next year, too, brings plenty to devour and only one sure shot at hope: books.
It is difficult to top 2025 with the superstar writers - Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and Arundhati Roy - all writing. Banu Mushtaq brought Kannada on the literary map with the International Booker Prize. Kiran Desai's 'The Loneliness of Sonny and Sonia' took decades to write and finally hit the shelves, as did Ruchir Joshi's 'Great Eastern Hotel'. Any year where these two books - chunky space-occupiers, worth every millimetre of space - have found many readers, is a good year.
Anuradha Roy's 'Called by the Hills', a quiet book that speaks deafeningly about the calm of the Himalayas and the power of connection being disconnected, was perhaps the most beautiful of the year. Amitava Kumar took a train journey and wrote a wonderful 'The Social Life of Indian Trains'. Pallavi Aiyar's 'Travels in the Other Place' and Ananya Vajpeyi's 'Place' - both end-of-the-year books - are memoirs on travel, love and loss. They're heartfelt, and special, books that took their time being written and ones that you carry with you in your heart.
A good year is determined by fresh voices, and 2025 had a host of many - loud and original. Poet Amy Singh's 'Singing Over Bones' was heartfelt and life-affirming. Harleen Singh's 'The Lost Heer' provided Punjab with a social history of women. It is a book that will remain on bookshelves for years to come, and it must. Sam Dalrymple added four more partitions to India. It is a book that has propelled him as a historian - providing competition to his father, who has a permanent spot on the bestseller lists.
Ria Chopra's print breeze-in is like her online avatar in 'Never Logged Out'; it's engaging and incisive. This is Chopra's first book and it won't be her last.
Unlike real heroes, fictional ones are harder to create. 2025, however, had a bunch of women - bright, articulate and eloquent - who made that leap: Uttama Kirit Patel with 'Shape of an Apostrophe' explored motherhood; Ponnu Elizabeth Mathew with 'The Remnants of Rebellion' blended history and fiction in a lush Kerala; 'The Ex Daughters of Tolstoy House' by Arunima Tenzin Tara is a dark gothic tale; Bhavika Govil's 'Hot Water' is a brilliant coming-of-age novel. They will all become names to reckon with - and soon.
Next year is a fresh chapter, and nothing spells hope like a freshly printed book. Like resolutions, they bring the promise of change. Historian Ira Mukhoty is back, this time with a biography of Begum Samru. A woman who refused to be slotted into a neat box, a tawaif, a ruler, she converted to Christianity, smoked a hookah and wore a turban. Ira writes elegant, compelling, deeply researched books - and Samru might not exist at the edge of history anymore, but her life needs to be filled out by a historian as talented as Ira.
A brand new voice in history is young journalist Sowmiya Ashok. 'The Dig: Keeladi and the Politics of India's Past' is an end-of-year debut that will certainly find a prominent place on shelves. Diplomat and writer Navtej Sarna has a new book on the shelf. Always a joy to read, he takes a deep dive into the green, saffron and white in 'A Flag to Live and Die For: A Short History of India's Tricolour'.
Exploring Indianness and pluralism is vocalist TM Krishna's 'We the People of India'. Krishna is Carnatic music's rockstar - an activist, singer and a compelling writer, like everything he does, the book is a part of his politics.
One of the finest writers in India, Stephen Alter will chase the monsoon across the hills where he lives to God's Own Country and beyond in the evocatively titled 'Fragrance of the Rain'. 'In The Shade of Many Trees', Kadambari Devarajan will bring wisdom as old as the trees. Blending folklore, memories, anecdotes and science, she'll get readers to look out of their windows and learn from the coconut, the peepal, the guava, the gooseberry, the sandalwood, the neem and the moringa.
Neha Sinha will do the impossible in Delhi to discover the wild. 'Wild Capital: Discovering Nature in Delhi' is a journey on ecological histories and the wild side.
The year ahead will be fiction-packed. Jerry Pinto brings back Yuri Fonseca, this time to witness his city burning during the Babri Masjid demolition. No longer a teenager, Yuri is in his thirties and finds himself as a guardian to a Muslim family as he watches everything change in his city. Deepa Anappara's first book, 'Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line', established her as an accomplished writer. Her next book, 'The Last of Earth', is set in 1869 as Britain trains spies to enter Tibet. Like her earlier work, this too involves a missing friend.
If Ruchir Joshi's 'Great Eastern Hotel' was decades in the making, Daniyal Mueenuddin's 'This is Where the Serpent Lives' has taken time to arrive. Daniyal, a Pakistani-American, blazed into the publishing world with his short stories, 'In Other Rooms, Other Wonders', in 2009, winning the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Short stories are hard to sell, but Daniyal's talent shone through. At 62, he'll have his first novel out in January.
Mohammed Hanif, the man with a deadpan expression and acerbic wit, has his new book, 'Rebel English Academy', out. Set in OK town in the 1970s after the hanging of a prominent politician and martial law, it has promise.
Award-winning writer Geetanjali Shree's short-story collection 'Once Elephants Lived Here' has been translated by Daisy Rockwell. No year is complete without memoirs. Arundhati Roy's memoir of her mother became the book of the year and 2026 will have its share of tell-all moments. Sly Stallone has one.
'A Very Lucky Man: The Memoirs of a Radio-wala' by Mark Tully promises to be an entertaining account of a man who spent his life chronicling the country he chose to live in. There are encounters with the Gandhis - Sanjay, Rajiv and Indira, who banned his book on Operation Bluestar. There are others too - Morarji Desai, Devi Lal, LK Advani, Sheikh Mujib and ZA Bhutto.
Journalists Saeed Naqvi and Khalid Mohamed write their own accounts. Atal Bihari Vajpayee continues to be fertile mining material as diplomat Ajay Bisaria, who has had a ringside view, writes 'The Unifier - Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Life and Times in Power'. But the memoir to watch out for is 'The Constitution is My Home: Conversations on Democratic Lawyering' by Indira Jaisingh and Ritu Menon. Any book that has India's two foremost feminists collaborating is bound to be special.
Vishi Anand has his memoir out, as does the top cop Sunil Gupta. 'Black Warrant' became a Netflix hit and 'Red Alert', that he has written with Samanwaya Rautray, shows he still has more stories to tell.
Adding to the list of must-reads in 2026 is Shinie Antony's 'The Haunting of Kunjamma P' and Karan Mahajan's 'The Complex'. Karan firmly planted himself on the literary map with his first book. If he tackles power and corruption in Delhi, Shinie writes about faith and a pious woman who sweeps the churchyard being compelled to write the autobiography of a devil with literary ambitions that comes to reside in her. Knowing Shinie, it will be witty, wise and original. No list is complete without poetry. This year sees Gulzar write about the city he found fame in. 'Aamchi Mumbai' is an ode to this city by the sea.
2026 will also be about reading. November saw the launch of the Independents, a grouping of India's leading indie publishers - Women Unlimited, LeftWord, Speaking Tiger, Tulika, Stree, Samya, etc. "We have come together to offer an alternative to corporate publishers, in terms of the books we publish individually, the activities and ideas we propose and the kind of diversity we believe is essential to a healthy book culture," says Ritu Menon of Women Unlimited. "The Independents ensure bibliodiversity."
And this word will be a catch-phrase, a conversation-starter and hopefully a controversy-stirrer, something that Indian publishing needs. Equally important for diversity are readers. If anything, 2025 has witnessed a tiny revolution brewing in chairs and even out in parks. This is likely to spread further. As lit fests mushroom across the country, Kerala has a second Manorama Hortus, and there's the third edition of The White Owl in Nagaland - those who miss the sense of belonging you feel being in a packed room with readers, are turning to books in smaller circles.
The reading club has become the new way to bond, date and find friends. "Books find a way to bring people together," says Rachna Kalra, founder of Silent Book Club in Delhi. Her only ask is that the person carry a book and read uninterrupted. Those with a flair for the exotic have their own tribe. Dokusha Book Club celebrates Japanese fiction in translation. Judging by the number of translated Japanese literature, including 'Hooked', a new book from the bestselling Asako Yuzuki, it will be a year filled with books to love, hold, curl up and read.
- The writer is a literary critic