At the New Delhi World Book Fair 2026, books and conversations were abundant for the readers. Amidst this humdrum, a poetry collection began to draw remarkable reader attention. At a time when poetry titles often find their audience gradually, Halfway to the Moon by Pratik Shah emerged as a pleasant surprise.
Published by Nu Voice Press, a division of Hubhawks, and exclusively distributed by Penguin Random House India, Halfway to the Moon emerged as one of the fair’s most consistently selling poetry titles. The response to the book was rooted in recognition. Readers spoke of seeing their own uncertainties, relationships, and private questions reflected in the poems. Rather than relying on overt lyricism or ornamental language, Shah’s free verse is direct and observant, allowing the emotions to surface without being announced. This quality made the collection accessible to younger readers encountering contemporary poetry, while still offering enough depth to engage long-time poetry readers.
Halfway to the Moon is a wonderfully tied collection of forty poems written between 2016 and 2020, & is structured in three sections: Gulmohar, Milk, and Lunation. Gulmohar opens the collection by turning outward, capturing landscapes, politics, and everyday moments with a sense of alertness and unease. Milk moves into the terrain of love and relationships, exploring tenderness, desire, and emotional fracture, particularly during the volatile years of late adolescence. The final section, Lunation, turns inward, examining identity, mental states, and the search for meaning through introspective, often unsettling reflections.
When read together, the three sections trace the turbulent and deeply unsettled process of growing up and evolving in difficult times. This strikes a chord with readers immediately. The poems take the path through coming-of-age, disenchantment, love, and existential questioning without attempting to resolve them neatly, and this explains their wide appeal and acceptance across all age groups.
The author’s own creative journey adds further context to the work. Born in 1999, Pratik Shah began in theatre as a child actor at IPTA Balmanch, a wing founded by Kaifi Azmi. Over the years, he has worked across disciplines, including fiction, spoken-word poetry, advertising, and cinema. His spoken poetry performances have reached millions online, while his psychological horror short Psyche climbed to number two on Amazon Kindle’s global charts in its category. Shah has also worked with Ogilvy and was part of the direction team for Netflix’s Skater Girl. He holds a Master’s degree from MICA, Ahmedabad, and is the founder and creative director of the boutique studio 33 Womb.
Despite the author’s varied background, Halfway to the Moon is a deeply personal project. It doesn’t feel like a curated collection for the market but an honest record of feelings accumulated over the formative years. Another thing that really appealed to the authors is that all profits from the sales of Halfway to the Moon would be going to charity. When literature ascends from just the scope of being confined to a book and starts to make a real difference to human life is then that a book becomes an institution in itself.
The reception of Halfway to the Moon at the New Delhi World Book Fair suggests a continued appetite for poetry that speaks plainly about uncertainty, identity, and emotional growth. Without courting attention, the book found its audience, one reader at a time, confirming that contemporary poetry still holds the power to connect across generations when it chooses sincerity over spectacle.
