🌿 Thematic Focus:

Category: Highlights Today | Sub-Category: World Events, Culture
GS Mapping: GS Paper I – Indian Heritage & World Literature

🌸 Intro:

🌸 April 23 — a date where stories breathe and dreams find wings.

Celebrated each year as World Book and Copyright Day, it honors not just books but the souls behind them: the authors, poets, historians, and dreamers who transform words into timeless bridges across cultures.

Today, we walk through some of the brightest moments that celebrate books and literary excellence — from Nobel and Booker Prize winners to Pulitzer journalists and India’s Sahitya Akademi awardees.

✨ Key Highlights:

📚 World Book Day Origins:

• Celebrated globally on April 23, initiated by UNESCO in 1995.
• Symbolically marks the death anniversaries of literary giants like Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Garcilaso de la Vega.
• 2025’s World Book Capital: Rio De Janeiro, taking over from Strasbourg.

🏆 Nobel Prize in Literature 2024:

• Awarded to Han Kang (South Korea) for intense poetic prose exploring historical trauma and human fragility.

📖 Booker Prize 2024:

• Won by Samantha Harvey (UK) for her novel Orbital, set aboard the International Space Station, reflecting on human solitude and Earth’s delicate beauty.

🌍 International Booker Prize 2024:

• Awarded to Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos, a novel set in East Berlin, reflecting societal collapse and personal betrayal.

📚 International Booker Prize 2025 Shortlist:

• Includes Heart Lamp by Kannada author Banu Mushtaq, the first ever Kannadiga shortlisted — a proud moment for Indian literature.

📰 Pulitzer Prizes 2024 (Women Trailblazers):

• Investigative Reporting: Hannah Dreier (New York Times) — Exposing migrant child labor.
• Explanatory Reporting: Sarah Stillman (New Yorker) — Felony murder charges and racial injustice.
• Feature Writing: Katie Engelhart (New York Times) — Exploring dementia and self-identity.

🏆 Sahitya Akademi Awards 2024:

• Easterine Kire (English) for Spirit Nights.
• Shruti B.R. (Kannada) among Yuva Puraskar winners for young writers.

📜 Concept Explainer:

World Book Day not only celebrates past literary giants but also expands our responsibility towards inclusivity — across language, gender, caste, and geography.
The rise of regional authors, women writers, and minority voices marks a golden broadening of human stories.

📚 GS Paper Mapping:

🌸 A Thought Spark:

“When a book is opened,
a new sunrise blooms within the mind.”

🌸 Monk’s Whisper:

“A library is not a building.
It is a garden where stars grow.”