Author Ruskin Bond was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2024 Ramnath Goenka Sahithya Samman awards by The New Indian Express. Bond wrote his first book at the age of 17 and since then has written more than 500 works, including novels, short stories, essays, and poems.

The other winners of the Sahithya Samman Awards are:

• Fiction: Aishwarya Jha for her novel . Jha’s debut novel traces two stories of love and longing separated by a little more than two decades.

• Debut fiction: Devika Rege for her novel about young adults coming to terms with a new India.

• Nonfiction: Neerja Chowdhury for . The book offers a behind-the-scenes look at how six Indian Prime Ministers – after Jawaharlal Nehru and before Narendra Modi – made key decisions that shaped the country.

• Debut nonfiction: Anirudh Kanisetti for , in which he brought forth the hidden stories of southern India’s past.

• Literary excellence: Tamil writer Perumal Murugan for speaking up against discrimination in his works of fiction.

Ruskin Bond received a cash award of Rs 2 lakh and a memento while the other winners received Rs 1 lakh and a memento.