His second book This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan Civil War (2015, Atlantic Books, ISBN 978-0857895950) was nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize.
[3] He became only the second Indian writer after Suketu Mehta to be nominated for this prestigious award for literary non-fiction.
[1][4] William Dalrymple, writing in The Guardian, considered it a remarkable and moving portrayal of the agonies of the conflict that "will stand as a fine literary monument against the government’s attempt at imposed forgetfulness".
[6] His articles cover a wide variety of subjects ranging from land reclamation in Singapore[7] to Tamil pulp fiction.
[9] In April 2024, in the run-up to India's general elections, Subramanian wrote a profile of Rahul Gandhi in The New York Times Magazine covering Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra, Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, and other topics.