5 Upcoming Books in India Readers Are Eagerly Waiting For
From celebrated Booker laureates to debut voices reimagining Indian academia through fiction, 2025 is shaping up to be an unforgettable year for literary enthusiasts. Here are five novels that readers across the country are eagerly awaiting for:
BY SHAHANA SHERIN
12 May 2025
1. Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy| Memoir | Penguin Random House | September 2025
Arundhati Roy, one of India’s most influential literary voices, is globally known mainly for her Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things and the critically acclaimed novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Her powerful essays, collected in works like Azadi and My Seditious Heart, reveal a fiercely political and poetic writer unafraid of taking bold stances.
Her upcoming release, Mother Mary Comes to Me, marks a poignant shift—a personal memoir written after the passing of her mother. Deeply emotional, yet intellectually rich, the book paints a vivid portrait of Roy’s formative years and the magnetic force of her mother, whom she calls “my shelter and my storm.” It promises the narrative depth of her novels and the radical clarity of her essays. A book not just for fans, but for anyone curious about how a how a life turns into literature.
2. The Loneliness of Sonia & Sunny by Kiran Desai| Literary Fiction | Penguin Random House | September 2025
Kiran Desai, author of The Inheritance of Loss—which earned both the Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award—returns with a sweeping tale of love, displacement, and destiny. Now based in New York, Desai brings a global sensibility to her Indian roots, creating stories that span continents and generations.
The Loneliness of Sonia & Sunny tells tales of two souls drawn together by a past that precedes them. Their journey—from an awkward matchmaking attempt by grandparents to the disjointed paths of adulthood in Vermont and New York—is rich in emotional tension. It’s a modern love story shadowed by trauma, culture, and the timeless search for connection. With early praise from literary giants, this is Desai’s most ambitious novel yet—at once epic and intimate.
3. Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia by Sam Dalrymple | History | Harper Collins | June 2025
Sam Dalrymple, a young historian with a global outlook and a background in Persian and Sanskrit from Oxford, is already a familiar name in multimedia storytelling. From founding peace-building platforms to premiering films at Sundance, Dalrymple now enters the literary world with a groundbreaking debut.
Shattered Land reexamines the tumultuous unmaking of the Indian Empire through five significant partitions. It traces the transformation of a sprawling dominion into twelve fractured nations, uncovering how modern Asia was shaped by decisions made in colonial boardrooms and insurgent battlefields. Backed by deep archival research and multilingual interviews, this is a work of staggering insight. If you’re a reader of William Dalrymple or Ramachandra Guha, Sam Dalrymple is a new name to add to this list.
4. The Himalaya in a Small House by Anuradha Roy| Memoir | Hachette India | July 2025
Anuradha Roy, known for lyrical novels such as Sleeping on Jupiter and The Folded Earth, turns inward with her new memoir The Himalaya in a Small House. Her prose, always poetic, now finds new resonance in a deeply personal narrative of home, retreat, and resilience.
The book captures Roy’s journey with her husband as they restore a dilapidated cottage in the Himalayan foothills. Amid breathtaking landscapes and the quietude of mountain life, Roy reflects on beauty, ecology, and the search for stillness. It’s an ode to a slower rhythm of life—one that resists the noise of the modern world. Part travelogue, part introspection, this book is a must-read for lovers of nature writing and personal essays.
5. Derrida in JNU by Nigitha John | Fiction | Magic Moon Publishers | May 2025
In the ever-vibrant corridors of Jawaharlal Nehru University, where politics mingles with poetry and protests echo into the night, a singular love story begins—one that deconstructs not just language, but the very idea of love itself. Nigitha John’s Derrida in JNU is a dazzling philosophical novel that ventures boldly into the terrain where heartbeats meet theory, where passion unfolds through debates, and where reality dances with magical realism.
At the center of the novel are Das and Diva—two fiercely intellectual individuals whose chemistry sparks amidst dhabas, debates, and demonstrations. Their love story is anything but conventional. It unravels like a post-structuralist puzzle, filled with witty dialogue, fragmented narratives, and references that leap from Derrida to ancient texts.
Set within JNU’s famously charged atmosphere, the novel uses the campus as more than just a backdrop. Here, buildings become characters, whispering in forgotten tongues. Trees bear witness to ideological shifts, and language—fluid, slippery, ever-receding—becomes both the battlefield and the prize. The novel’s magic realist elements are interwoven with postmodern sensibilities, creating a narrative that is as cerebral as it is soulful.
What makes Derrida in JNU remarkable is its ability to translate abstract philosophical ideas into lived emotional experiences. Nigitha John, with her deep roots in literary theory and academic life, brings credibility and precision to every sentence. Her background—a PG and an M.Phil from JNU, years of teaching, and a bilingual literary career—shines through in the layered, intelligent prose. Yet for all its intellectual depth, the book is also tender and vulnerable.
Published by Magic Moon Publishers, Derrida in JNU is one of the boldest fiction debuts of 2025. It offers readers a new way of engaging with both literature and philosophy, without compromising on narrative joy. For lovers of campus novels, philosophical fiction, or simply stories that dare to ask big questions, this is a book that will linger long after the final page.
These five upcoming books capture the rich diversity of Indian writing today—spanning memoirs, history, love stories, and radical fiction. Whether you’re drawn to personal narratives, sweeping sagas, or philosophical puzzles, 2025 promises something extraordinary for every reader.