I still remember going to the boimela with my parents as a child. Most years, my book fair haul would be much heavier than my adolescent arms could carry. Yet, I’d insist on carrying my books myself — much to the amusement of my parents, and horror of other visitors who must have thought my parents particularly cruel for making a child carry such heavy books. Like many generations of Bengali children growing up before the prevalence of online marketplaces that deliver books to your doorstep year-round, I eagerly awaited the Kolkata Book Fair every January.

First held in 1976 on the modest ground opposite the Academy of Fine Arts near Victoria Memorial, the International Kolkata Book Fair began as an experiment by a group of young publishers and booksellers like Sushil Mukherjea and Jayant Manaktala who were inspired by the Frankfurt Book Fair. Unlike business-focused international book fairs, however, they wanted to create a people’s literary festival that privileged readers over trade, leisurely browsing over best-seller buying, and chance discovery over algorithmic salesmanship. Over the decades, it has grown into one of the world’s largest public book fairs, drawing millions of visitors who treat it as an annual ritual of the city’s intellectual life. Unlike most international book fairs designed primarily for industry professionals, Kolkata’s is defiantly democratic: part literary pilgrimage, part adda, part carnival of ideas.

In India, where access to books remains uneven between urban and rural areas, the fair serves as a cultural equalizer: a space where small presses stand alongside major publishers, where young readers discover authors they’ve never heard of, and where regional languages are at the heart of the conversation. It continues to be one of India’s most significant literary events because of the intimacy it fosters among writers, publishers, and readers in a city that values the written word. Over the years, I have met many of my literary idols at the Kolkata Book Fair: the Bengali author Manishankar Mukhopadhyay, better known by his mononym ‘Shankar’; the legendary Ruskin Bond; mythologist Anand Neelakantan (who shortlisted one of my early science fiction short stories for the Times of India Write India Prize in 2017); and many others. The Kolkata Book Fair is where my passion for writing and becoming a writer first took shape — it was the place that made it seem possible.

As our reading habits migrate online and book-buying is increasingly shaped by opaque, hyper-personalised algorithms, book fairs like Kolkata’s feel even more essential today. I find it troubling how these platforms have reduced the joyful act of discovery to what their algorithms think we want, rather than what we might stumble upon in a bookstore. Amazon’s convenience comes at the cost of context, curiosity, and the messy, joyful unpredictability that defines a true reading life. The Kolkata Book Fair is a necessary antidote to this enshittification: a reminder that literature thrives in community, and that the best books often find us when we don’t even know we are looking for them.

This Homegrown reading list highlights five recently published books by Indian authors I think you should look for at the Kolkata Book Fair this year, but don’t let it limit you. Embrace the process of discovery, embrace surprise, meet books on the bookshelves. Who knows, you might just find your next favourite author, if not a book that will alter how you see the world forever:

The protagonist of the Ondaatje Prize and the Hindu Prize-winning novelist and journalist Rahul Bhattacharya’s new novel, Charu — the motherless daughter of a railway worker — longs to escape the limits of domestic life in a young nation full of restless energy. As diesel replaces steam and drought, famine, and labour unrest grip her railway town, she seizes her chance and boards a train to Bombay, just as the country moves toward Emergency. In the chaotic city, she begins to shape her own future: searching for the missing father she left behind, imagining the mother she never knew, and reinventing everything from her unusual surname to her empty bank account. She navigates love, marries a gentle drifter, faces tragedy, and ultimately becomes a railway woman herself. Moving through prejudice and everyday discrimination with clear-eyed resilience, Charu emerges as a quiet, steadfast Everywoman — determined to keep her heart open to her country’s fragile, unfolding promise.

Delhi’s urban villages are paradoxical spaces. Ancient yet evolving, marginalized yet central to the national capital’s economy, these neighborhoods embody tensions between tradition and progress, belonging and exclusion, history and ambition. Here, the past remains present and old traditions co-exist with modern cafés and start-ups. Originating from early 20th-century land acquisitions, these villages transformed through urban expansion into complex spaces: part city, part village, part memory, part reinvention. Ekta Chauhan’s ‘Sheher Mein Gaon’ explores how people remember, resist, and reimagine their roles in a constantly changing city through stories of place, identity, and power.

When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated, yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them — a clumsy meddling that only drove them apart. Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India, fearing she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world. ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’ is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, the Booker Prizes called it “the most ambitious and accomplished work yet” by Kiran Desai. ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’ was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize.

Arundhati Roy’s first memoir, ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’, is a soaring account — both intimate and inspiring — of how the author became the person and writer she is today, shaped by her circumstances and especially by her complex relationship with her mother, whom she calls “my shelter and my storm”. Stemming from a flood of memories and feelings triggered by her mother Mary’s death, this is a remarkable, often unsettling, yet unexpectedly humorous memoir of Arundhati Roy’s life, from childhood through the present, spanning from Kerala to Delhi.

Varsha Gupta wants fish for her lunch. Her family doesn’t understand; the three-year-old has never tasted fish in her life. The Guptas are strict vegetarians and don’t allow it inside their Calcutta mansion. But Varsha claims she can remember another life: a mud house by a river where she caught and cooked fish with a different mother. Perplexed, the Guptas turn to Dr. Shoma Bose, a psychiatrist who has been investigating what are known as “cases of the reincarnation type” for years. But Shoma’s understanding of the world is changed forever by Varsha’s revelations. Half a century later, when Varsha’s case file catches the attention of a group of environmental activists, Shoma’s nephew Dinu is drawn inexorably into their plans. As Dinu finds himself caught up in the search for Varsha, buried memories of his own past begin to surface.

Travelling between late-sixties’ Calcutta and present-day Brooklyn, ‘Ghost-Eye’ is an urgent and expansive novel from one of our greatest living storytellers, about family, fate and our fragile planet.

The 49th International Kolkata Book Fair (IKBF) in 2026 is scheduled to run from 22 January to 3 February 2026 at the Boimela Prangan (Central Park Mela Ground) in Salt Lake, Kolkata.

If you enjoyed reading this, here’s more from Homegrown:

7 Stories Of Light, Hope, & Humanity: A Homegrown Diwali Reading List

‘Silent Cuisines’ Documents The Disappearing Foodways Of Gujarat’s Adivasi Communities

Arundhati Roy’s New Memoir Dispels The Divinity Of Motherhood & The Good Daughter