International Prize for Arabic Fiction Announces 2026’s 16-book Longlist

DECEMBER 15, 2025 — Organizers of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) today announced the longlist of 16 novels that will be in contention for the 2026 prize.

The longlist was chosen from a total of 137 submissions by a panel of judges chaired by Tunisian critic Mohamed Elkadhi and joined by celebrated Palestinian novelist Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, Bahraini critic Dheya Alkaabi, South Korean academic Laila Hyewon Baek, and Iraqi writer-translator Shakir Nouri.

There are several well-known authors on the list who have books available or forthcoming in English translation, including Said Khatibi (whose Sheikh Zayed Book Award-winning The End of the Sahara is forthcoming in Alex Elinson’s translation next year), Najwa Barakat (whose Mr. N, in Luke Leafgren’s translation, won the Banipal Prize), and Omaima Abdullah Al-Khamis (whose Voyage of the Cranes in the Cities of Agate won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal and was translated by Sarah Enany as The Book Smuggler).

Mohamed Elkadhi, Chair of the 2026 judges, said of the list:

The novels included in this year’s longlist are a microcosm of the contemporary Arab literary  scene in all its richness and variety. Many of the novels turn inward, exploring the private worlds of distinctive and unforgettable characters experiencing psychological crises and struggling to adapt to lived reality. History, too, figures prominently in works that evoke the recent or distant past with striking immediacy, probing its reverberations in the present.

Questions of identity also recur, framed against the backdrop of war, conflict, migration, revolution, and the uneven rhythms of social and urban change. While some writers adopt realism and classical structures, a greater number blur the boundaries between the real and the extraordinary.

Their narratives employ multiple narrators, streams of consciousness, and fragmented structures to reflect the relativity of the universe. Digging deep into the human psyche, they portray the pain suffered by those who feel isolated and alienated from reality, as they strive to uncover a truth distinct to that commonly accepted, moving in the orbits of the repressed and the unspoken.

The full list of 2026 longlisted books, as provided by organizers:

The six shortlisted titles will be announced in February 2026 in Bahrain, organizers, note, with the winning novel set to be announced on Thursday April 9, 2026, in Abu Dhabi.