{"id":12884,"date":"2026-04-02T14:06:01","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T12:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/?p=12884"},"modified":"2026-04-02T16:17:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T14:17:49","slug":"ebrd-literature-prize-2026-shortlist-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2026\/04\/02\/ebrd-literature-prize-2026-shortlist-announced\/","title":{"rendered":"EBRD Literature Prize 2026\u00a0shortlist announced\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>1 April 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Today the\u00a0<strong>European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)<\/strong>\u00a0announced the shortlist for its\u00a0<strong>2026 Literature Prize<\/strong>, featuring\u00a0ten\u00a0books in English translation from\u00a0nine\u00a0of the countries where the Bank\u00a0invests.\u00a0Entries are open to publishers based in Europe, North America or in a territory where the Bank operates.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The shortlist highlights a range of fiction\u00a0which speaks\u00a0to today\u2019s urgent themes including\u00a0the legacies of conflict and postwar society, displacement and exile, memory and intergenerational trauma, and speculative interrogations of power and identity. Several novels foreground intimate family dynamics and personal reckoning, while others expand into political odysseys or near-future dystopias that question how bureaucratic,\u00a0technological\u00a0and social systems shape human lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The shortlist was selected by an independent panel of judges: writer,\u00a0critic\u00a0and cultural journalist\u00a0<strong>Dr Maya Jaggi (chair)<\/strong>; Albanian author\u00a0<strong>Professor Lea Ypi<\/strong>; Nigerian\u00a0novelist\u00a0<strong>Professor\u00a0Chigozie Obioma<\/strong>; and British nonfiction writer\u00a0<strong>Marek Kohn.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>People\u00a0and Trees: A Trilogy<\/strong>\u00a0by Akram\u00a0Aylisli\u00a0(Azerbaijan),\u00a0originally written in Azerbaijani and\u00a0translated from the Russian by Katherine E. Young,\u00a0is set in the mountains of Azerbaijan just after World War II.\u00a0It\u00a0chronicles the wrenching transformation of traditional Azeri society under Soviet rule.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Death and the Gardener\u00a0<\/strong>by Georgi\u00a0Gospodinov\u00a0(Bulgaria), translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel, is a novel spanning ancient Ithaca to present-day Sofia, exploring family life under communism through the story of a father, a\u00a0son\u00a0and an orphaned garden.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Gospodinov&nbsp;won the 2023 International Booker Prize with his novel&nbsp;<em>Time Shelter,&nbsp;<\/em>also translated by Angela Rodel.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>In Late Summer<\/strong><em>\u00a0<\/em>by Magdalena Bla\u017eevi\u0107 (Croatia), translated from the Croatian by An\u0111elka Ragu\u017e, is a poetic novel based on personal experience that juxtaposes ordinary country life with the brutality of war. The book has also been longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Bedbugs\u00a0<\/strong>by Martina\u00a0Vidai\u0107\u00a0(Croatia), translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursa\u0107, is an insight into a psyche damaged not by the trauma of war, but by the intrinsic, and often isolating, difficulties of the human condition.\u00a0Ellen Elias-Bursa\u0107\u2019s translation of <em>Sons, Daughters<\/em> by Ivana Bodro\u017ei\u0107, won last year\u2019s EBRD Literature Prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>On the Greenwich Line<\/strong><em>\u00a0<\/em>by Shady Lewis (Egypt), translated from the Arabic by Katharine Halls, is a novel\u202fwhich traces the absurdities of racism,\u00a0austerity\u00a0and bureaucracy in contemporary England. This is a story about systemic failure and human courage, and about London and its many lost souls.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Eye of the Monkey<\/strong>\u00a0by Krisztina T\u00f3th (Hungary), translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie\u00a0Mulzet, is a\u00a0near-future\u00a0dystopia in which interwoven stories reveal the pressures of power,\u00a0poverty\u00a0and intimate relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Sololand<\/strong>\u00a0by Hassan\u00a0Blasim\u00a0(Iraq), translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright, is a collection of novellas exploring the complexities of exile through the multiple perspectives of refugees, victims of war and the pre-war culture of Iraq. Hassan\u00a0Blasim\u00a0was the first Arabic winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2014.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Ice<\/strong>\u00a0by Jacek Dukaj (Poland), translated from the Polish by Ursula Phillips, is a Trans-Siberian odyssey through political, criminal, scientific,\u00a0philosophical\u00a0and amorous intrigues. It\u00a0leads the\u00a0reader into an endless winter to confront something utterly\u00a0alien.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Rock, Paper, Grenade<em>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>by Artem Chekh (Ukraine), translated from the Ukrainian by Olena Jennings and Oksana Rosenblum,\u00a0is a\u00a0gritty, realist depiction of Ukraine and the post-Soviet world.\u00a0This book offers an affecting look into the life of someone suffering from PTSD.\u00a0<em>Rock, Paper, Grenade<\/em>\u00a0won the 2021 BBC News Ukraine Book of the Year\u00a0Award.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>We Computers<\/strong>\u00a0by Hamid Ismailov (Uzbekistan), translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega,\u00a0is\u00a0a poetic novel\u00a0set in mid-1980s Paris,\u00a0in which the protagonist builds a computer programme capable of analysing and generating literature.\u00a0Ismailov\u2019s book,\u00a0<em>The Devils\u2019 Dance<\/em>\u00a0won the 2019 EBRD Literature Prize.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Chair of Judges,\u00a0Maya Jaggi,\u00a0said:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201c<em>My fellow judges and I were thrilled by the poetry, inventiveness and sheer audacity of fiction emerging from societies in transitional turmoil \u2013 even at war. Spanning the 1920s to the dystopian future, from south London to Siberia, our shortlist ranges from a newly translated classic from mountainous Azerbaijan that dared to challenge the ideology of the day, to a love-hate triangle with a misogynist psychiatrist in the heart of Europe, tracing how authoritarian power and flagrant inequality corrode intimacy and trust. From the epic and elegiac to the epistolary and auto-fictional, these writers\u2019 bold formal experiments vary from a Polish sci-fi odyssey of counterfactual history asking what if the Russian revolution had never happened, and a Bildungsroman centred on a Ukrainian Afghan-war veteran with PTSD, to a moving meditation on grief for a gardener-father.\u00a0Another is set in a time before artificial intelligence\u2019s infiltration of publishing, when an Uzbek novelist imagined a computer-generated narrator fed on Persian poetry, spawning a Borgesian novel in ghazal form.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><em>\u201cIn the first year of Iraqi authors\u2019 eligibility for the prize, an educated woman\u2019s 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 \u2018daydreaming\u2019 imagination. That trilogy, and a darkly comic absurdist satire on the bureaucracy of funerals far from home \u2013 also translated from the Arabic \u2013 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.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Three finalists will be announced\u00a0at the end of this month. The winning author and translator will be revealed on\u00a02 July\u00a0at a public awards ceremony and reception at the EBRD\u2019s headquarters in London<\/strong>, attended by the judges and the finalist authors,\u00a0translators\u00a0and publishers. Prize money of \u20ac20,000 will be divided equally between the winning author and translator.\u202fThe authors and translators of the other two finalist works will each receive\u00a0\u20ac2,000. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>More information about the EBRD Literature Prize and each of the shortlisted works can be found\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ebrd.com\/home\/news-and-events\/news\/events\/ebrd-literature-prize.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>1 April 2026 Today the\u00a0European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)\u00a0announced the shortlist for its\u00a02026 Literature Prize, featuring\u00a0ten\u00a0books in English translation from\u00a0nine\u00a0of the countries where the Bank\u00a0invests.\u00a0Entries are open to publishers based in Europe, North America or in a territory where the Bank operates.\u00a0\u00a0 The shortlist highlights a range of fiction\u00a0which speaks\u00a0to today\u2019s urgent themes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":12885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,22,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-literature","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>EBRD Literature Prize 2026\u00a0shortlist announced\u00a0 - Instytut Polski w Londynie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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April 2026\\nToday the\u00a0European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)\u00a0announced the shortlist for its\u00a02026 Literature Prize, featuring\u00a0ten\u00a0books in English translation from\u00a0nine\u00a0of the countries where the Bank\u00a0invests.\u00a0Entries are open to publishers based in Europe, North America or in a territory where the Bank operates.\u00a0\u00a0\\nThe shortlist highlights a range of fiction\u00a0which speaks\u00a0to today\u2019s urgent themes including\u00a0the legacies of conflict and postwar society, displacement and exile, memory and intergenerational trauma, and speculative interrogations of power and identity. Several novels foreground intimate family dynamics and personal reckoning, while others expand into political odysseys or near-future dystopias that question how bureaucratic,\u00a0technological\u00a0and social systems shape human lives.\u00a0\\nThe shortlist was selected by an independent panel of judges: writer,\u00a0critic\u00a0and cultural journalist\u00a0Dr Maya Jaggi (chair); Albanian author\u00a0Professor Lea Ypi; Nigerian\u00a0novelist\u00a0Professor\u00a0Chigozie Obioma; and British nonfiction writer\u00a0Marek Kohn.\u00a0\\nPeople\u00a0and Trees: A Trilogy\u00a0by Akram\u00a0Aylisli\u00a0(Azerbaijan),\u00a0originally written in Azerbaijani and\u00a0translated from the Russian by Katherine E. Young,\u00a0is set in the mountains of Azerbaijan just after World War II.\u00a0It\u00a0chronicles the wrenching transformation of traditional Azeri society under Soviet rule.\u00a0\u00a0\\nDeath and the Gardener\u00a0by Georgi\u00a0Gospodinov\u00a0(Bulgaria), translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel, is a novel spanning ancient Ithaca to present-day Sofia, exploring family life under communism through the story of a father, a\u00a0son\u00a0and an orphaned garden.\u00a0\\nGospodinov won the 2023 International Booker Prize with his novel Time Shelter, also translated by Angela Rodel. \\nIn Late Summer\u00a0by Magdalena Bla\u017eevi\u0107 (Croatia), translated from the Croatian by An\u0111elka Ragu\u017e, is a poetic novel based on personal experience that juxtaposes ordinary country life with the brutality of war. The book has also been longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2026.\u00a0\\nBedbugs\u00a0by Martina\u00a0Vidai\u0107\u00a0(Croatia), translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursa\u0107, is an insight into a psyche damaged not by the trauma of war, but by the intrinsic, and often isolating, difficulties of the human condition.\u00a0Ellen Elias-Bursa\u0107\u2019s translation of Sons, Daughters by Ivana Bodro\u017ei\u0107, won last year\u2019s EBRD Literature Prize.\\nOn the Greenwich Line\u00a0by Shady Lewis (Egypt), translated from the Arabic by Katharine Halls, is a novel\u202fwhich traces the absurdities of racism,\u00a0austerity\u00a0and bureaucracy in contemporary England. This is a story about systemic failure and human courage, and about London and its many lost souls.\u00a0\\nEye of the Monkey\u00a0by Krisztina T\u00f3th (Hungary), translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie\u00a0Mulzet, is a\u00a0near-future\u00a0dystopia in which interwoven stories reveal the pressures of power,\u00a0poverty\u00a0and intimate relationships.\\nSololand\u00a0by Hassan\u00a0Blasim\u00a0(Iraq), translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright, is a collection of novellas exploring the complexities of exile through the multiple perspectives of refugees, victims of war and the pre-war culture of Iraq. Hassan\u00a0Blasim\u00a0was the first Arabic winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2014.\u00a0\\nIce\u00a0by Jacek Dukaj (Poland), translated from the Polish by Ursula Phillips, is a Trans-Siberian odyssey through political, criminal, scientific,\u00a0philosophical\u00a0and amorous intrigues. It\u00a0leads the\u00a0reader into an endless winter to confront something utterly\u00a0alien.\u00a0\\nRock, Paper, Grenade\u00a0by Artem Chekh (Ukraine), translated from the Ukrainian by Olena Jennings and Oksana Rosenblum,\u00a0is a\u00a0gritty, realist depiction of Ukraine and the post-Soviet world.\u00a0This book offers an affecting look into the life of someone suffering from PTSD.\u00a0Rock, Paper, Grenade\u00a0won the 2021 BBC News Ukraine Book of the Year\u00a0Award.\u00a0\\nWe Computers\u00a0by Hamid Ismailov (Uzbekistan), translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega,\u00a0is\u00a0a poetic novel\u00a0set in mid-1980s Paris,\u00a0in which the protagonist builds a computer programme capable of analysing and generating literature.\u00a0Ismailov\u2019s book,\u00a0The Devils\u2019 Dance\u00a0won the 2019 EBRD Literature Prize.\u00a0\\nChair of Judges,\u00a0Maya Jaggi,\u00a0said:\u00a0\\n\u201cMy fellow judges and I were thrilled by the poetry, inventiveness and sheer audacity of fiction emerging from societies in transitional turmoil \u2013 even at war. Spanning the 1920s to the dystopian future, from south London to Siberia, our shortlist ranges from a newly translated classic from mountainous Azerbaijan that dared to challenge the ideology of the day, to a love-hate triangle with a misogynist psychiatrist in the heart of Europe, tracing how authoritarian power and flagrant inequality corrode intimacy and trust. From the epic and elegiac to the epistolary and auto-fictional, these writers\u2019 bold formal experiments vary from a Polish sci-fi odyssey of counterfactual history asking what if the Russian revolution had never happened, and a Bildungsroman centred on a Ukrainian Afghan-war veteran with PTSD, to a moving meditation on grief for a gardener-father.\u00a0Another is set in a time before artificial intelligence\u2019s infiltration of publishing, when an Uzbek novelist imagined a computer-generated narrator fed on Persian poetry, spawning a Borgesian novel in ghazal form.\\n\u201cIn the first year of Iraqi authors\u2019 eligibility for the prize, an educated woman\u2019s 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 \u2018daydreaming\u2019 imagination. That trilogy, and a darkly comic absurdist satire on the bureaucracy of funerals far from home \u2013 also translated from the Arabic \u2013 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.\u201d\\nThree finalists will be announced\u00a0at the end of this month. The winning author and translator will be revealed on\u00a02 July\u00a0at a public awards ceremony and reception at the EBRD\u2019s headquarters in London, attended by the judges and the finalist authors,\u00a0translators\u00a0and publishers. Prize money of \u20ac20,000 will be divided equally between the winning author and translator.\u202fThe authors and translators of the other two finalist works will each receive\u00a0\u20ac2,000. \\nMore information about the EBRD Literature Prize and each of the shortlisted works can be found\u00a0here.\u00a0\u00a0\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2026\/04\/02\/ebrd-literature-prize-2026-shortlist-announced\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2026\/04\/EDbrd-image.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2026\/04\/EDbrd-image.jpg\",\"width\":1379,\"height\":919},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2026\/04\/02\/ebrd-literature-prize-2026-shortlist-announced\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"EBRD Literature Prize 2026\u00a0shortlist announced\u00a0\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/\",\"name\":\"Instytut Polski w Londynie\",\"description\":\"Instytuty Polskie\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/650660f82290e905505348ef8ca79a33\",\"name\":\"konopkab\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fb1006bc5b4ae26fa605cdf675d5e97c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fb1006bc5b4ae26fa605cdf675d5e97c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"konopkab\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/author\/konopkab\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"EBRD Literature Prize 2026\u00a0shortlist announced\u00a0 - Instytut Polski w Londynie","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2026\/04\/02\/ebrd-literature-prize-2026-shortlist-announced\/","og_locale":"pl_PL","og_type":"article","og_title":"EBRD Literature Prize 2026\u00a0shortlist announced\u00a0 - Instytut Polski w Londynie","og_description":"1 April 2026 Today the\u00a0European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)\u00a0announced the shortlist for its\u00a02026 Literature Prize, featuring\u00a0ten\u00a0books in English translation from\u00a0nine\u00a0of the countries where the Bank\u00a0invests.\u00a0Entries are open to publishers based in Europe, North America or in a territory where the Bank operates.\u00a0\u00a0 The shortlist highlights a range of fiction\u00a0which speaks\u00a0to today\u2019s urgent themes [&hellip;]","og_url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2026\/04\/02\/ebrd-literature-prize-2026-shortlist-announced\/","og_site_name":"Instytut Polski w Londynie","article_published_time":"2026-04-02T12:06:01+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-04-02T14:17:49+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1379,"height":919,"url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2026\/04\/EDbrd-image.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"konopkab","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Napisane przez":"konopkab","Szacowany czas czytania":"7 minut"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"event","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2026\/04\/02\/ebrd-literature-prize-2026-shortlist-announced\/","url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2026\/04\/02\/ebrd-literature-prize-2026-shortlist-announced\/","name":"EBRD Literature Prize 2026\u00a0shortlist announced\u00a0","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2026\/04\/02\/ebrd-literature-prize-2026-shortlist-announced\/#primaryimage"},"image":["https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2026\/04\/EDbrd-image.jpg","https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2026\/04\/EDbrd-image-300x200.jpg","https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2026\/04\/EDbrd-image-1024x682.jpg","https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2026\/04\/EDbrd-image.jpg"],"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2026\/04\/EDbrd-image.jpg","datePublished":"2026-04-02T12:06:01+02:00","dateModified":"2026-04-02T14:17:49+02:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/650660f82290e905505348ef8ca79a33"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2026\/04\/02\/ebrd-literature-prize-2026-shortlist-announced\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"pl-PL","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2026\/04\/02\/ebrd-literature-prize-2026-shortlist-announced\/"]}],"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","startDate":"2026-04-01","endDate":"2026-04-01","eventStatus":"EventScheduled","eventAttendanceMode":"OfflineEventAttendanceMode","location":{"@type":"place","name":"","address":"","geo":{"@type":"GeoCoordinates","latitude":"","longitude":""}},"description":"1 April 2026\nToday the\u00a0European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)\u00a0announced the shortlist for its\u00a02026 Literature Prize, featuring\u00a0ten\u00a0books in English translation from\u00a0nine\u00a0of the countries where the Bank\u00a0invests.\u00a0Entries are open to publishers based in Europe, North America or in a territory where the Bank operates.\u00a0\u00a0\nThe shortlist highlights a range of fiction\u00a0which speaks\u00a0to today\u2019s urgent themes including\u00a0the legacies of conflict and postwar society, displacement and exile, memory and intergenerational trauma, and speculative interrogations of power and identity. Several novels foreground intimate family dynamics and personal reckoning, while others expand into political odysseys or near-future dystopias that question how bureaucratic,\u00a0technological\u00a0and social systems shape human lives.\u00a0\nThe shortlist was selected by an independent panel of judges: writer,\u00a0critic\u00a0and cultural journalist\u00a0Dr Maya Jaggi (chair); Albanian author\u00a0Professor Lea Ypi; Nigerian\u00a0novelist\u00a0Professor\u00a0Chigozie Obioma; and British nonfiction writer\u00a0Marek Kohn.\u00a0\nPeople\u00a0and Trees: A Trilogy\u00a0by Akram\u00a0Aylisli\u00a0(Azerbaijan),\u00a0originally written in Azerbaijani and\u00a0translated from the Russian by Katherine E. Young,\u00a0is set in the mountains of Azerbaijan just after World War II.\u00a0It\u00a0chronicles the wrenching transformation of traditional Azeri society under Soviet rule.\u00a0\u00a0\nDeath and the Gardener\u00a0by Georgi\u00a0Gospodinov\u00a0(Bulgaria), translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel, is a novel spanning ancient Ithaca to present-day Sofia, exploring family life under communism through the story of a father, a\u00a0son\u00a0and an orphaned garden.\u00a0\nGospodinov won the 2023 International Booker Prize with his novel Time Shelter, also translated by Angela Rodel. \nIn Late Summer\u00a0by Magdalena Bla\u017eevi\u0107 (Croatia), translated from the Croatian by An\u0111elka Ragu\u017e, is a poetic novel based on personal experience that juxtaposes ordinary country life with the brutality of war. The book has also been longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2026.\u00a0\nBedbugs\u00a0by Martina\u00a0Vidai\u0107\u00a0(Croatia), translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursa\u0107, is an insight into a psyche damaged not by the trauma of war, but by the intrinsic, and often isolating, difficulties of the human condition.\u00a0Ellen Elias-Bursa\u0107\u2019s translation of Sons, Daughters by Ivana Bodro\u017ei\u0107, won last year\u2019s EBRD Literature Prize.\nOn the Greenwich Line\u00a0by Shady Lewis (Egypt), translated from the Arabic by Katharine Halls, is a novel\u202fwhich traces the absurdities of racism,\u00a0austerity\u00a0and bureaucracy in contemporary England. This is a story about systemic failure and human courage, and about London and its many lost souls.\u00a0\nEye of the Monkey\u00a0by Krisztina T\u00f3th (Hungary), translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie\u00a0Mulzet, is a\u00a0near-future\u00a0dystopia in which interwoven stories reveal the pressures of power,\u00a0poverty\u00a0and intimate relationships.\nSololand\u00a0by Hassan\u00a0Blasim\u00a0(Iraq), translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright, is a collection of novellas exploring the complexities of exile through the multiple perspectives of refugees, victims of war and the pre-war culture of Iraq. Hassan\u00a0Blasim\u00a0was the first Arabic winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2014.\u00a0\nIce\u00a0by Jacek Dukaj (Poland), translated from the Polish by Ursula Phillips, is a Trans-Siberian odyssey through political, criminal, scientific,\u00a0philosophical\u00a0and amorous intrigues. It\u00a0leads the\u00a0reader into an endless winter to confront something utterly\u00a0alien.\u00a0\nRock, Paper, Grenade\u00a0by Artem Chekh (Ukraine), translated from the Ukrainian by Olena Jennings and Oksana Rosenblum,\u00a0is a\u00a0gritty, realist depiction of Ukraine and the post-Soviet world.\u00a0This book offers an affecting look into the life of someone suffering from PTSD.\u00a0Rock, Paper, Grenade\u00a0won the 2021 BBC News Ukraine Book of the Year\u00a0Award.\u00a0\nWe Computers\u00a0by Hamid Ismailov (Uzbekistan), translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega,\u00a0is\u00a0a poetic novel\u00a0set in mid-1980s Paris,\u00a0in which the protagonist builds a computer programme capable of analysing and generating literature.\u00a0Ismailov\u2019s book,\u00a0The Devils\u2019 Dance\u00a0won the 2019 EBRD Literature Prize.\u00a0\nChair of Judges,\u00a0Maya Jaggi,\u00a0said:\u00a0\n\u201cMy fellow judges and I were thrilled by the poetry, inventiveness and sheer audacity of fiction emerging from societies in transitional turmoil \u2013 even at war. Spanning the 1920s to the dystopian future, from south London to Siberia, our shortlist ranges from a newly translated classic from mountainous Azerbaijan that dared to challenge the ideology of the day, to a love-hate triangle with a misogynist psychiatrist in the heart of Europe, tracing how authoritarian power and flagrant inequality corrode intimacy and trust. From the epic and elegiac to the epistolary and auto-fictional, these writers\u2019 bold formal experiments vary from a Polish sci-fi odyssey of counterfactual history asking what if the Russian revolution had never happened, and a Bildungsroman centred on a Ukrainian Afghan-war veteran with PTSD, to a moving meditation on grief for a gardener-father.\u00a0Another is set in a time before artificial intelligence\u2019s infiltration of publishing, when an Uzbek novelist imagined a computer-generated narrator fed on Persian poetry, spawning a Borgesian novel in ghazal form.\n\u201cIn the first year of Iraqi authors\u2019 eligibility for the prize, an educated woman\u2019s 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 \u2018daydreaming\u2019 imagination. That trilogy, and a darkly comic absurdist satire on the bureaucracy of funerals far from home \u2013 also translated from the Arabic \u2013 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.\u201d\nThree finalists will be announced\u00a0at the end of this month. The winning author and translator will be revealed on\u00a02 July\u00a0at a public awards ceremony and reception at the EBRD\u2019s headquarters in London, attended by the judges and the finalist authors,\u00a0translators\u00a0and publishers. Prize money of \u20ac20,000 will be divided equally between the winning author and translator.\u202fThe authors and translators of the other two finalist works will each receive\u00a0\u20ac2,000. \nMore information about the EBRD Literature Prize and each of the shortlisted works can be found\u00a0here.\u00a0\u00a0"},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"pl-PL","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2026\/04\/02\/ebrd-literature-prize-2026-shortlist-announced\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2026\/04\/EDbrd-image.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2026\/04\/EDbrd-image.jpg","width":1379,"height":919},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2026\/04\/02\/ebrd-literature-prize-2026-shortlist-announced\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"EBRD Literature Prize 2026\u00a0shortlist announced\u00a0"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#website","url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/","name":"Instytut Polski w Londynie","description":"Instytuty Polskie","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"pl-PL"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/650660f82290e905505348ef8ca79a33","name":"konopkab","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"pl-PL","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fb1006bc5b4ae26fa605cdf675d5e97c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fb1006bc5b4ae26fa605cdf675d5e97c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"konopkab"},"url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/author\/konopkab\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12884"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12895,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12884\/revisions\/12895"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}