Zara Chowdhary wins the Shakti Bhatt Prize in its final year for her memoir ‘The Lucky

Zara Chowdhary was awarded the 2025 Shakti Bhatt Prize for her debut work, The Lucky Ones. Her memoir examines her family’s trauma to document three months of sectarian violence in her hometown of Ahmedabad. Set during the 2002 riots, when Chowdhary was just 16, it is also the story of a trapped, severely dysfunctional family caught up in the tides of Indian history.

Chowdhary will receive a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh.

The Shakti Bhatt Prize will be discontinued after this year’s award. Originally called The Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize, in later years it became a prize that honoured a writer’s body of work. However, this year the prize ended the way it began in 2008 – by awarding a debut author.

For 17 years, the Shakti Bhatt Prize has recognised literature from the South Asian subcontinent, giving the award to writers from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and India. Administered, judged, curated and funded by writers, the Prize was independent and did not involve any corporate sponsors.

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation, which set up the prize, has received financial contributions from author and journalist TJS George, journalist Sheela Bhatt, and academic Thomas Kailath.

The Shakti Bhatt Prize complete list of winners over the years:

Mohammed Hanif, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, 2008
Mridula Koshy, If It Is Sweet, 2009
Samanth Subramanian, Following Fish, 2010
Jamil Ahmad, The Wandering Falcon, 2011
Naresh Fernandes, Taj Mahal Foxtrot, 2012
Nilanjana Roy, The Wildings, 2013
Bilal Tanweer, The Scatter Here is Too Great, 2014
Rohini Mohan, The Seasons of Trouble, 2015
Akshaya Mukul, Gita Press and the Making of India, 2016
Anuk Arudpragasam, The Story of a Brief Marriage, 2017
Sujatha Gidla, Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India, 2018
Tony Joseph, Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From, 2019
Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha, Body of Work, 2020
The Shakti Bhatt Foundation did not award a literary prize in 2021, and instead made a donation towards Covid-19 relief work
Manoranjan Byapari, Body of Work, 2022
CS Lakshmi (Ambai), Body of Work, 2023
Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, Body of Work, 2024
Zara Chowdhary, The Lucky Ones, 2025