APRIL 1, 2026 — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) today announced the 10-book shortlist for its 2026 EBRD Literature Prize. The unusual lit prize honors books from nine of the countries in which the Bank operates.
The shortlisted books include Hassan Blasim’s Sololand, translated by Jonathan Wright and published by Comma Press and Shady Lewis’s On the Greenwich Line, translated by Katharine Halls and published by Peirene Press.
The full list of shortlisted titels, in alphabetical order by author, are:
People and Trees: A Trilogy by Akram Aylisli (Azerbaijan), originally written in Azerbaijani and translated from the Russian by Katherine E. Young and published by Plamen Press
Sololand by Hassan Blasim (Iraq), translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright and published by Comma Press
In Late Summer by Magdalena Blažević (Croatia), translated from the Croatian by Anđelka Raguž and published by Linden Editions
Rock, Paper, Grenade by Artem Chekh (Ukraine), translated from the Ukrainian by Olena Jennings and Oksana Rosenblum and published by Seven Stories Press UK
Ice by Jacek Dukaj (Poland), translated from the Polish by Ursula Phillips and published by Head of Zeus, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing
Death and the Gardener by Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria), translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
We Computers by Hamid Ismailov (Uzbekistan), translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega and published by Yale University Press London
On the Greenwich Line by Shady Lewis (Egypt), translated from the Arabic by Katharine Halls and published by Peirene Press
Eye of the Monkey by Krisztina Tóth (Hungary), translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet and published by Seven Stories Press UK
Bedbugs by Martina Vidaić (Croatia), translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać and published by Sandorf Passage
The jury is chaired by Writer Maya Jaggi and also includes professor Lea Ypi, novelist Chigozie Obioma, and non-fiction writer Marek Kohn.
Jaggi said, in a prepared statement:
“In the first year of Iraqi authors’ eligibility for the prize, an educated woman’s scorn for sharia law under Islamic State heads a trio of novellas that scourge sectarian militias (at great risk to the writer) and champion the ‘daydreaming’ imagination. That trilogy, and a darkly comic absurdist satire on the bureaucracy of funerals far from home – also translated from the Arabic – are reminders that economic transition is often inseparable from the agonies of displacement. That several of these books, chosen by an independent panel of judges, were written in some form of exile, underlines the vital need to defend freedom of expression.”
Three finalists will be announced at the end of April, with a winning author and translator set to be revealed on July 2, 2026. Their €20,000 will be divided equally between the winning author and translator, while the authors and translators of the other two finalist works will each receive €2,000.