The state we’re in: Author Rana Dasgupta talks awards, AI, and the decline of the nation-state

He recently won the Windham-Campbell prize, and it comes at just the right time, Dasgupta says – as he was tussling with the writer’s place in a world of AI.

Tussling with a new book about the failure of the nation-state, British writer Rana Dasgupta, 53, was feeling like anything but a winner, when he got the call telling him that he had in fact won the 2025 Windham-Campbell prize for non-fiction.

“It was a complete surprise,” he says. Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi (2014) was released 11 years ago. This acknowledgement of his body of work came at just the right time, though, he says. A time