Q&A with Mandira Nayar interview, Crossword Book Awards 2025 Jury: Why words still matter in a world of instant fixes

Mandira Nayar, jury member for the Crossword Book Awards 2025, recalls conquering the jury's reading task as “tiny mountains” of books taller than her eight-year-old, and how each pile revealed stories that were relished, savoured, and sometimes unforgettable.
Mandira Nayar is an accomplished journalist and former Deputy Bureau Chief at The Week, with over two decades of experience covering culture, history, foreign policy, and books. A Charles Wallace Fellow (2015), she is also the Co-founder of Agla Varka, a cultural platform which aims to spark meaningful conversations on Punjab and has reported for The Hindu and The Telegraph.

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? 

I read for a living. So, a stack of over 80 books—piled on top of each other so that they were taller than my eight-year-olds—was like strength training! I divided them into tiny mountains to be conquered and read what I felt like that day or week. I couldn’t read all the history books all at once, so I would dip into another pile to read a memoir, or a breezy book on love or on the environment. Most books did not make the longlist. But that didn’t mean they weren’t read, or relished, or enjoyed. 

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

 That there is hope; that words matter; that in the blink-and-you-miss-it attention span of social media, books are still alive and thriving and writers can tell stories—that need to be heard, read and thought over and don't disappear in an instant. 

Our algorithms may block out what we don't want to see, forcing us further into a silos; these books represent diversity. They are deep dives into areas we find uncomfortable, a reexamination of history, of complex identities and of India. 

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

When you have to pick 10 books out of a list of over 80, everything is hard. We are all different people, at different stages of our lives, Milan is in a different continent, and decisions, and consensus--while friction free and fun-is never easy. 

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

Passionate, diverse, ambitious.

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

The list represents the concerns that India is grappling with--as is the world--of divisiveness, of caste, of hatred, of inequity and reexamining the past. These are not easy conversations but they are important ones.  

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

To be fair, I read for a living. So, my answer will be biased. But we've always turned to literature to escape, to live other lives, to learn, to navigate the world. I don't think that will ever change. I breathe to read. Content is a 'fix'  for an instant hit, but books are the real deal. 

What, to you, makes a book unforgettable?

Lots of things. Writing, a turn of phrase, the story, research, an anecdote that makes you laugh or just for the journey that it takes you on.

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

Read--well, deeply, diversely, you never know where you will find inspiration. There is no writing without reading.