The Sahitya Akademi Award is given each year, since 1955, by the Sahitya Akademi (India's National Academy of Letters), to writers and their works, for their outstanding contribution to the upliftment of Indian literature in each of the official languages of India.
No awards were given in the years not listed.
| Year | Book | Writer | Category of Books |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1960 | The Guide | R. K. Narayan | Novel |
| 1964 | The Serpent and the Rope | Raja Rao | Novel |
| 1965 | The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin | Verrier Elwin | Autobiography |
| 1967 | Shadow From Ladakh | Bhabani Bhattacharya | Novel |
| 1969 | An Artist In Life | Niharranjan Ray | Biography |
| 1971 | Morning Face | Mulk Raj Anand | Novel |
| 1975 | Scholar Extraordinary | Nirad C. Chaudhuri | Biography |
| 1976 | Jawaharlal Nehru | Sarvepalli Gopal | Biography |
| 1977 | Azadi | Chaman Nahal | Novel |
| 1978 | Fire on the Mountain | Anita Desai | Novel |
| 1979 | Inside the Haveli | Rama Mehta | Novel |
| 1980 | On the Mother | K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar | Biography |
| 1981 | Relationship | Jayanta Mahapatra | Poetry |
| 1982 | The Last Labyrinth | Arun Joshi | Novel |
| 1983 | Latter-Day Psalms | Nissim Ezekiel | Poetry |
| 1984 | The Keeper of the Dead | Keki N. Daruwalla | Poetry |
| 1985 | Collected Poems | Kamala Das | Poetry |
| 1986 | Rich Like Us | Nayantara Sahgal | Novel |
| 1987 | Trapfalls In the Sky | Shiv K. Kumar | Poetry |
| 1988 | The Golden Gate | Vikram Seth | Novel |
| 1989 | The Shadow Lines | Amitav Ghosh | Novel |
| 1990 | The Long Silence | Shashi Deshpande | Novel |
| 1991 | The Trotter-Nama | I. Allan Sealy | Novel |
| 1992 | Our Trees Still Grow In Dehra | Ruskin Bond | Short Stories |
| 1993 | After Amnesia | G. N. Devy | Essays |
| 1994 | Serendip | Dom Moraes | Poetry |
| 1996 | Memories of Rain | Sunetra Gupta | Novel |
| 1998 | Final Solutions and Other Plays | Mahesh Dattani | Drama |
| 1999 | The Collected Poems | A. K. Ramanujan | Poetry |
| 2000 | Cuckold | Kiran Nagarkar | Novel |
| 2001 | Rajaji: A Life | Rajmohan Gandhi | Biography |
| 2002 | A New World | Amit Chaudhuri | Novel |
| 2003 | The Perishable Empire | Meenakshi Mukherjee | Essays |
| 2004 | The Mammaries of the Welfare State | Upamanyu Chatterjee | Novel |
| 2006 | The Sari Shop | Rupa Bajwa | Novel |
| 2007 | Disorderly Women | Malathi Rao | Novel |
| 2009 | Mahabharata: An Inquiry into the Human Condition | Chaturvedi Badrinath | Criticism |
| 2010 | The Book of Rachel | Esther David | Novel |
| 2011 | India after Gandhi[1] | Ramachandra Guha[2] | Historical Narrative |