The longlist for the 11th edition of the Oxford Bookstore Book Cover Prize was unveiled at The Park, New Delhi, on 19 December, celebrating 28 outstanding book covers selected from across India and spanning a wide range of literary genres.
The announcement was made by an eminent jury led by museum curator and jury chair, Alka Pande; alongside author and member of parliament, Shashi Tharoor and guest juror, Samar Jodha, installation artist, mentor, and TED speaker, in the presence of publishers, designers, authors, and literary enthusiasts.
The diverse perspectives of the jury – Priti Paul, Shobhaa De, Kunal Basu, Shashi Tharoor and Alka Pande, along with the guest jurors Samar Jodha and Anja Riedeberger, played a crucial role in curating the longlist from over 200 eligible entries received this year.
The 28 longlisted titles showcase the creativity of Indian graphic designers, who continue to push the boundaries of visual storytelling through innovative and compelling book cover designs, and represent a striking diversity of themes, formats, and genres.
On the significance of book covers, Alka Pande said, “Jhumpa Lahiri in her book The Clothing of Books writes that the process of writing is a dream, but the book cover represents the awakening. John Berger, art critic, novelist, painter, and poet said – When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.”
The book cover is actually a silent salesman, a piece of art, and a map all at once, she said, adding the prize is one of the few platforms of India that recognizes the designer, an invisible artist, almost as a co-author of the book’s success. A great cover isn’t just a wrapper; it’s a portal – It captures the soul of the manuscript without giving away the ending.
“Indian book design has evolved from literal illustrations to abstract, bold, and experimental art. Balance of form and function, how the typography, texture, and color palette work together. Covers are the silent dialogue between the author’s words and the designer’s vision. There is nuance, there is a visual metaphor, there is a tactile experience, and there is a typographic boldness which really shapes the making of the language of a book cover design,” she said.
Tharoor said in his 11 years as a jury, the impact of vernacular publishing has increased even on the cover prize. “The vast majority of the covers were either of books from particularly Bengali and Malayalam and one or two in Hindi and translations from them. It’s striking that the extent to which our perception of the publishing world and the books used to be dominated by English has now been transformed even in this in this presentation,” he said.
The Oxford Bookstore Book Cover Prize invites us to reflect not only on books as vessels of ideas but on the often overlooked artistry that ushers those ideas into the world, he said, adding we are often reminded not to judge a book by its cover. But even that sentiment is ethically sound and practically poetically aspirational. In reality, the cover is where curiosity is first stirred in any book. Of course, it’s not where judgment is concluded or ought to be. But that cover is what catches your attention, particularly if you’re looking at a bookstore or even nowadays online, where covers are prominently displayed. The cover is an invitation. It’s not a verdict. It’s a visual overture that prepares the reader for the author’s voice rather than presuming to speak over that voice. That delicate balance is what makes book cover design such a quietly demanding craft, he added.
“A book cover has a modest but meaningful role to play. It offers the reader a first sense of the book’s mood and intent without attempting to summarize or supplant the text itself. It draws one in briefly and then quite properly recedes, allowing the author’s voice to take over. When this is done well, the effect is almost seamless. When it’s not, the contrast between the cover and the book becomes immediately apparent. This is why good cover design does merit our attention, and that’s why I supported the idea of this prize when Oxford first mooted it a dozen years ago,” he said.
What the Oxford Bookstore cover prize has done consistently and thoughtfully over the past 11 years is to insist that this act of visual interpretation deserves attention in its own right, he said, adding that by recognizing cover designers as creative interlocutors rather than anonymous service providers as that sadly used to be in the old days, the prize has helped us shift how we speak about books not merely as texts but as cultural objects shaped by multiple intelligences.
According to Tharoor, book covers do shape the way books enter our imagination. They frame expectation, they set tone, they suggest seriousness, playfulness, intimacy, or ambition. They do not tell us what to think about the book, but they do gently suggest how to begin thinking about the book. In an era where books increasingly compete for attention, not just with one another, but with every conceivable form of distraction, that first moment of engagement matters more than ever.
“The challenge, of course, has intensified. The contemporary book cover must now function at multiple scales as a physical object on a shelf and as a small glowing rectangle on a screen. It must survive reduction without losing resonance. It must remain legible without becoming literal. That designers continue to meet this challenge and still catch your eye, and my eye, with such ingenuity is both heartening and impressive. I think what’s particularly striking about the submissions we see year after year is a confidence that I see in Indian book design today. There is a willingness to trust the reader, to resist over-explanation, and to allow ambiguity to do some of the work. There is also a pleasing refusal to be formulaic. Typography converses with illustration. Restraint competes happily with the exuberance of color. Tradition is neither fetishized nor discarded. It is engaged with intelligently and creatively,” he said.
The prize has played an important role in making visible the work, the labor, that goes behind each of these covers. By naming designers, foregrounding process, and celebrating visual thinking, it has helped correct a long-standing imbalance in publishing culture, he said, adding that the designers are not merely packaging content, they are interpreting it. Their work requires close reading, conceptual clarity, and a sensitivity to language that is often underestimated.
The longlist for the 11th edition of the Oxford Bookstore Book Cover Prize
65 Ways to Talk and Forget by Raja Chakraborty, published by Penprints. Cover designed by Supriyo Chakraborty
Abantar Kathar Bhire Ache by Rajarshi Das Bhowmik, published by Boibhashik Prokashoni. Cover designed by Pinaki De
Becoming Bangalore by Roopa Pai, published by Hachette India. Cover designed by Priya Kuriyan
Biplab-Prashange by Jean-Paul Sartre and translated into Bengali by Chandan Adhya, published by Jadavpur University Press (Publications). Cover designed by Trinankur Banerjee
Bristijatak by Zoha Kazemi and translated into Bengali by Anushtup Sett, published by Kalpabiswa Publication. Cover designed by Poushali Paul
Carnival: A Novel by Sayam Bandyopadhyay and translated from Bengali into English by Arunava Sinha, published by Aleph Book Company. Cover designed by Pinaki De
Cheriya Manushyarum Valiya Lokavum by G Aravindan, published by DC Books. Cover designed by Ramu Aravindan
Chikkamma Tours (Pvt.) Ltd by Unmana, published by Westland Tranquebar- An imprint of Westland Books. Cover designed by Saurabh Garge
Flashlights: An Anthology of Very Short Stories by Ilahi Dad Khan, Chandreyee Lahiri, Camellia Paul, Clara Mok, Indrani Bhattacharya, Jackie Kabir, Kapka Nilan, Rajib Mahmud, Marcelo Medone, Monobina Nath, Neil Patrick Doherty, Naheen Taba, Nandini Gupta, Navratra, Neera Kashyap, Niles Reddick, Nolcha Fox, Noora Shamsi Bahar, Raza Ali, Roberta Beach Jacobson, Mohammad Shafiqul Islam, Shruti Sareen, Srijani Dutta, Subarna Banerjee, Sudeep Sen, Sufia Khatoon, Sukti Sarkar, Tasmia Amin Turna, Tulip Chowdhury. Published by The Antonym Collections. Cover designed by Bishnupriya Chowdhuri
Geisha in the Gota Patti by Chetna Keer, published by Readomania Publishing. Cover designed by Rupak Neogy
Gods, Guns and Missionaries by Manu Pillai, published by Allen Lane- An Imprint of Penguin Random House India. Cover designed by Ahlawat Gunjan
Great Eastern Hotel by Ruchir Joshi, published by Fourth Estate- An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers India. Cover designed by Itu Chaudhuri
Kanchhi by Weena Pun, published by Hachette India. Cover designed by Pia AlizĂ©Â
Lal Ded by Arvind Gigoo, published by Om Books International. Cover designed by Pinaki De
Magadh by Shrikant Verma and translated from Hindi into Bengali by Arunava Sinha, published by Jadavpur University Press (Publications). Cover designed by Rochishnu Sanyal
Mahabharatam by Sugathakumari, published by DC Books. Cover designed by Dhanya Sreejith
Many Ramayanas Many Lessons by Anand Neelakantan, published by HarperCollins Non-Fiction- An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers India. Cover designed by Rajatveer Singh, with illustrations by Onkar Fondekar
My Beloved Life: A Novel by Amitava Kumar, published by Aleph Book Company. Cover designed by Bena Sareen
Once Upon the Queens: Gender Upturned Tales from Bengal by Satabdi Das and translated from Bengali into English by Nadia Imam, published by The Antonym Collections. Cover designed by Paramita Brahmachari
Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper by Chander Mohan and Jyotsna Mohan, published by HarperCollins- An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers India. Cover designed by Saurav Das
Sanatana Dharma by Kripamoya Das, published by Ananda – An Imprint of Penguin Random House India. Cover designed by Aakriti Khurana
Textiles from Bengal: A Shared Legacy by Sonia Ashmor, Tirthankar Roy and Niaz Zaman, published by Mapin Publishing. Cover designed by Ishan Khosla
The Diary of an Author by Ajitabha Bose, published by Ajitabha Publishers. Cover designed by Ajitabha Bose
The Homeless Princess by Ujjwal Ghosh, published by Kalpabiswa Publication. Cover designed by Ujjwal Ghosh
The Menstrual Coupé by Shahina K Rafiq and translated by Priya K Nair, published by Hachette India. Cover designed by Pia Alizé
The Mosaic: A Collection of Poems by Swati Chopra, published by Rupa Publications. Cover designed by Amrita Chakravorty with illustrations by Catherine Kuruvilla
The Remains of the Body by Saikat Majumdar, published by Vintage – an imprint of Penguin Random House India. Cover designed by Shadab Khan
Trimaya by Manisha Kulshreshtha, published by Vani Prakashan. Cover designed by Kanupriya Kulshreshtha
Itu Chaudhuri, cover designer of Great Eastern Hotel, told Indian Printer & Publisher, “Great Eastern Hotel is a sprawling and monumental novel about 1940s Calcutta—a location of the Empire, an outpost of the allied WW2 war effort in Asia. That’s why the cover is a landscape—of a great city at once Cosmopolitan and Bengali. Great Eastern Hotel, and the cover are micro-models of that experience. That landscape is created by the lettering that we drew. Lovingly called Bong Deco, it mixes the lettering of the Art Deco, (swinging Jazz, foreign spooks and pretty pastry) with the Bengali script (to point to the city’s stature in India’s intellectual life). The colors aim to pop through the image of a daunting literary book, hinted at by its length, and signal its playful, textured voice. We stayed away from the marketing ethos of solitary image and elegant type, preferring weirdness over slickness, risking being awkward, even ugly, and a touch mad.”
Amrita Chakravorty, cover designer of Mosaic, shared, “Mosaic in the cover is used as a metaphor for life and emotion. The Mosaic technique was chosen, not because the title suggested fragmentation, but to highlight how broken or incomplete pieces gain beauty when assembled together. This reflects both the structure of the poetry collection and the nature of life, where moments of love, laws, joy and alienation may feel this joint in isolation yet together, shape a meaningful human experience. Thus, the Mosaic becomes that wholeness created through accumulation, not perfection.”
The Bougainvillea was selected deliberately over other floral motifs for its inherited duality, unlike flowers with singular or fixed symbolism, such as roses for romance or lotuses for purity, Chakravorty said, adding that Bougainvillea embodies both fragility and resilience, though it’s visually delicate. It thrives in hard conditions, aligning closely with the poem’s exploration of vulnerability alongside emotional endurance. It’s associations with memory, longing, and allows multiple emotional interpretations.
Warm reds and corals express intimacy and passion, deep greens provide grounding and blue disrupts and balances, highlighting emotional tension while unifying the composition on a neutral background, she added on the color strategy.
Graphic and type designer and owner of the Typecraft Initiative, Ishan Khosla, who designed the cover for Textiles from Bengal: A Shared Legacy, told Indian Printer & Publisher, “This is a book on textiles, and I wanted to use an image which evokes textiles or evokes Bengal, it evokes this idea of trade, because Bengal was a powerhouse of trade. When the East India Company was there, about 50 to 60% of trade was in textiles – a lot of it from Bengal and Gujarat. I wanted a cover which was evocative of this idea of trade and the landscape of Bengal. If you look at the typography, which says Textiles from Bengal, which is the title, that typeface has actually been handmade by women from Rajasthan. It’s an applique – a textile craft that has been made into a font, which you can type on the computer. That connection with textiles was very important for me to use on the cover. A lot of these textile books will put an embroidery or a kantha because it’s Bengal, or a jamdani, or someone wearing textiles, or a detail. I wanted to move away from that to a painting that has no textiles on it, but the painting by a Britisher is about boats and ships leaving Bengal for trade.
Following the longlist announcement, Tharoor discussed his latest book, Our Living Constitution (Aleph Book Company), with columnist and author Vir Sanghvi, chairman of Culinary Culture. The discussion explored the Constitution as a living document, delving into its historical foundations, contemporary relevance, and the democratic values it seeks to safeguard in present-day India.
The winner will be announced in New Delhi in March 2026.
