Q&A with Satish Padmanabhan, Crossword Book Awards 2025 Jury: “The toughest part is always which books to leave out”

Satish Padmanabhan, jury member for the Crossword Book Awards 2025, reflects on the contradictions running through this year’s non-fiction submissions, the fragility of our cherished values, and the books that linger in memory long after the last page.

Managing Editor at Outlook, Padmanabhan brings 25 years of experience in journalism and literary criticism. He has also taught journalism at the Times School of Journalism and the Indian Institute of Mass Communication. He has also worked with Sunday, BusinessWorld, Economic Times, NDTV, and CNBC and is deeply engaged in book journalism and literary programming.

The jury reads a huge number of submissions in a limited time, what was your approach to reading so widely and still giving each book its due?

It was indeed a Herculean task. Luckily, over the year I had gone through most of the books for review purposes or just reading. So, I focused first on the books that were entirely new to me. I put them under various categories and chose the best book in a particular genre, say historical, biographies or political. It was through a process of elimination that we arrived at a manageable number of books which would be now read in detail by all the jury members.

If literature reflects its time, what did this year’s Non-fiction submissions tell you about the world we’re living in?

That it is full of contradictions. That in the end there is nothing like a grown-up world, it's always forming and grappling with all the issues people must have pondered about 5,000 years ago. So unlike a fully grown pelican or a peepal tree or a panther, the world is constantly in a flux. Ideas and hypothesis and issues that were long thought settled keep unravelling. Essentially, it means that men and women who form the world, those who think, write and read are always evolving as well as regressing. 

What was the toughest part of arriving at a longlist from such a wide range of submissions?

It's always which books to leave out, to compare two books in the same genre and be forced to choose one. 

If you had to describe this year’s longlist in three words, what would they be?

History, Geography, Civics

What conversations do you think this year’s longlist adds to Indian literature, or even to our society at large?

The most important conversation is about our cherished values, and how brittle our conviction towards them really are. If it was thought that democracy is the ideal all nations must aspire for, there is growing illiberalism and a right-ward lurch in most parts of the world. If equality and fairness were qualities to cherish, the gap between the rich and the poor, between the all-powerful and powerless, between the leaders and the people is only widening. If end-of-war was thought to be the natural progression after 1945, the world is more at conflict now than ever.

In a time of endless content, what do you think makes literature still worth turning to?

Literature is all the more important in these times of a sea of forwards and an ocean of reels as books are distilled, edited and concise.

What, to you, makes a book unforgettable?

When a book doesn't leave you years after you have turned its last page, when you see your life reflected in characters in a book set in a faraway place and a foreign culture, when the writing shines a bright light to clear the many confusions and complexities. 

As a jury member, what advice would you give to aspiring Indian writers hoping to be recognized in the coming years?

To not to worry too much about whether a subject or a theme has been discussed and dealt with before--there is always the possibility of a fresh look and tell a tale to our times.