2026 Neustadt Prize to Ibrahim Nasrallah
OCTOBER 22, 2025 — Yesterday evening, organizers announced the great Palestinian novelist and poet Ibrahim Nasrallah as the 29th laureate of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Like the Swedish Nobel, the Oklahoma-based Neustadt Prize recognizes outstanding literary merit in literature worldwide, with a list of bold literary laureates that range from Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Assia Djebar to Nuruddin Farah to Boubacar Boris Diop. Indeed, in their press materials, the prize refers to itself as the “American Nobel.”
However, with the Neustadt, writers aren’t nominated by external bodies. Instead, each of the year’s jurors — themselves noted writers — nominates one writer. Nasrallah was nominated by novelist Shereen Malherbe.
In her nominating statement, Malherbe said that “Nasrallah’s literary works span universal issues and themes woven into the Palestinian struggle that allow readers to connect deeply with Palestine outside of a colonial framework.”
Other finalists this year were Yuri Andrukhovych, Elif Batuman, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Robert Olen Butler, Safia Elhillo, Mathias Énard, Yoko Tawada, and Jesmyn Ward.
The choice was clearly positioned as a championing of not just Nasrallah’s work, but also Palestinian literature. In a prepared statement, Robert Con Davis-Undiano, executive director of World Literature Today, the prize’s sponsor, said that Nasrallah’s “winning this award will mark a significant moment in the western reapproach to Palestinian culture.”
Nasrallah’s work is widely translated into English and has appeared in ArabLit and ArabLit Quarterly. His most recent book-length translation to English is Palestinian, by Ibrahim Nasrallah, tr. Huda Fakhreddine (World Poetry Editions, 2024). Four of his novels are available from AUC Press and one, Prairies of Fever, translated by May Jayyusi and Jeremy Reed, from Interlink Books.
The Neustadt Prize is one of a handful of international literary awards of this broad, international, genre-spanning scope. Winners are awarded $50,000.
Recent poems:
‘Mary of Gaza’, tr. Huda Fakhreddine
‘Do You Hear Me? What Now?’, tr. susan abulhawa
‘The Birds of Ala’ Al-Najjar’, tr. Dr. Sali Karmi
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