OCTOBER 1, 2026 — Organizers today announced the thirteen books translated from twelve languages that have been longlisted for the 2026 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.
On the list is one title translated from Arabic: Batool Abu Akleen’s debut poetry collection 48kg, with translations by
For this year’s competition — the prize’s tenth — organizers received 164 submissions translated from 37 languages, the highest number of submissions from the widest range of languages in the history of the prize.
This year’s prize is being judged by Arifa Akbar, Véronique Tadjo, and Boyd Tonkin.
The longlist includes fiction, poetry, short stories, and narrative non-fiction.
Judge Boyd Tonkin said of the 2026 longlist:
For a decade, the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation has celebrated and amplified outstanding works by women from around the world, and the equally precious art of their translators. This year’s longlist affirms that this has always been an especially open award: open to work from all countries, territories and languages; open to all translators, whoever and wherever they may be; open to all kinds and genres of excellent writing, past or present.
Our chosen titles span poetry, novels, short fiction and memoir. They include rediscovered classics and urgently contemporary works. They range in time and place from late 19th-century Japan, the post-First World War Netherlands, and 1990s India, to Norway, Hungary and Gaza today. We hope that our selection will encourage readers to join us on this journey to discover the global wealth of women’s writing, and the prowess of the translators who bring it to our doors.
The shortlist will be announced on October 26, with a winner announced at a ceremony in London on November 16.
The complete longlist:
- Batool Abu Akleen, 48kg, with Graham Liddell, Wiam El-Tamami, Cristina Viti and Yasmin Zaher (Tenement Press / now available in a new, collaborative edition from Tenement & Penguin Press)
- Hanna Johansson, Body Double, translated from Swedish (Sweden) by Kira Josefsson (Scribe Publications)
- Krisztina Tóth, Eye of the Monkey, translated from Hungarian (Hungary) by Ottilie Mulzet (Seven Stories Press UK)
- Linn Ullmann, Girl, 1983, translated from Norwegian (Norway) by Martin Aitken (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House UK)
- Lalla Romano, In Farthest Seas, translated from Italian (Italy) by Brian Robert Moore (Pushkin Press)
- Hélène Bessette, Lili Is Crying, translated from French (France) by Kate Briggs (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
- Eva Luka, The Minotaur’s Daughter: Selected Poems, translated from Slovak (Slovakia) by James Sutherland-Smith (Seagull Books)
- Geetanjali Shree,Our City That Year, translated from Hindi (India) by Daisy Rockwell (Tilted Axis Press)
- Anjet Daanje, The Remembered Soldier, translated from Dutch (Netherlands) by David McKay (Scribe Publications)
- Ichiyo Higuchi, Troubled Waters, translated from Japanese (Japan) by Bryan Karetnyk (Pushkin Press)
- Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, We Are Green and Trembling, translated from Spanish (Argentina) by Robin Myers (Harvill, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK)
- Anna Nerkagi,White Moss, translated from Russian (Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug) by Irina Sadovina (Pushkin Press)
- Ingvild Rishøi,Winter Stories, translated from Norwegian (Norway) by Diane Oatley (Grove Press UK, Grove Atlantic)
Podcast: ON BULAQ: A Talk with Batool Abu Akleen
Reviews of 48kg: On Batool Abu Akleen’s ’48kg’: A review by Hilary Plum
’48 kg’: Creating Life from a Desire to Diminish and Fade Away: A review by Husam Maarouf
Interview: Batool Abu Akleen: Poetry Is What Keeps Me Alive
Poems: 6 Poems to Celebrate Batool Abu Akleen, MPT’s 2024 Poet in Residence
Voices of Resistance, a collection with Batool: On ‘Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide’