Banipal Prize Announces 2025’s 6-book Shortlist – ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY
DECEMBER 1, 2025 — Today, the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature announced the six-book shortlist for their 2025 prize: “two comic works, an historical epic, a dystopian fiction, a prison memoir, and an eco-novel from the Gulf.”
The complete shortlist:
- The Guardian of Surfaces by Bothayna Al-Essa (Kuwait), translated by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain (Selkies House Limited, 2024)
- Honey Hunger by Zahran Alqasmi (Oman), translated by Marilyn Booth (Hoopoe, an imprint of the American University in Cairo Press, 2025)
- On the Greenwich Line by Shady Lewis (Syria), translated by Katharine Halls (Peirene Press, 2025)
- Granada: The Complete Trilogy by Radwa Ashour (Egypt), translated by Kay Heikkinen (Hoopoe, an imprint of the American University in Cairo Press, 2024)
- The Tale of a Wall: Reflections on Hope and Freedom by Nasser Abu Srour (Palestine), translated by Luke Leafgren (Penguin Press, 2024)
- Sand-Catcher by Omar Khalifah (Palestine), translated by Barbara Romaine (Coffee House Press, 2024)
Organizers noted that “Memory, identity, freedom, and repression” were common themes, while each book was stylistically unique. They added: “It is worth noting that five of the six translators are women, a gender imbalance in evidence in the wider 2025 submission and, it would appear, more widely in modern Arabic literary translation.” The news release goes on to note that, while the translators of the submitted works were largely women, the authors were largely men.
The judging panel was chaired by Tina Phillips, who was joined by educator Susan F. Frenk, translator-writer Nashwa Nasreldin, and journalist Boyd Tonkin.
The prize, now in its twentieth year, is set to announce a winner and runner-up on January 7, 2026.
Find out more about each of the shortlisted books on the Banipal website.
