EBRD Literature Prize 2026 finalists announced

• Books by authors from Azerbaijan, Egypt and Poland translated into English are finalists for this year’s prize
• Chosen by an independent panel of judges chaired by writer and critic Dr Maya Jaggi, with Professor Lea Ypi, Professor Chigozie Obioma and Dr Marek Kohn
• Winner to be announced on 2 July

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has announced the three finalists for the 2026 EBRD Literature Prize.

In alphabetical order by author, they 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

Ice by Jacek Dukaj (Poland), translated from the Polish by Ursula Phillips and published by Head of Zeus, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing

On the Greenwich Line by Shady Lewis (Egypt), translated from the Arabic by Katharine Halls and published by Peirene Press

The independent jury is chaired by writer, critic and cultural journalist Dr Maya Jaggi and includes Albanian academic and author Professor Lea Ypi, Nigerian novelist Professor Chigozie Obioma and non-fiction writer Dr Marek Kohn.

Of the three works, Dr Jaggi said:

“The first English translation of a classic Azerbaijani trilogy, People and Trees by Akram Aylisli is an enchanting coming-of-age story set in a mountain village in Soviet Azerbaijan amid an exodus of menfolk conscripted into the Second World War. The child’s-eye linked novellas expose the brutality of women’s lives, but also their spirited defiance. My fellow judges and I admired the skilful indirection of the narrative, the boy ingenuously revealing adult passions and crimes he scarcely grasps. Katherine E Young’s vivid translation via the Russian opens a hidden world, conjuring a harsh yet magical childhood, filled with the taste of walnuts and pomegranates.”

“Ice by Jacek Dukaj impressed the jury, in Ursula Phillips’s assured and ingenious translation from the Polish, as a sci-fi epic that transcends genre, moving from steampunk and gothic horror into existential anxiety, black physics, amorous intrigue and counterfactual history that asks, what if the Russian revolution had never happened and the Belle Epoque survived? Its fictitious Polish philosopher, told his gambling debts will be quashed if he undertakes a mission for the Ministry of Winter, embarks on a fantastical trans-Siberian quest for his exiled father. Yet the novel, whose historical characters range from Lenin to the inventor Tesla, is rooted in the realities of Polish colonisation under the Russian empire.”

“On the Greenwich Line by Shady Lewis delighted the judges with its bold originality, absurdist satire and deadpan plot twists. Tasked with burying a young Syrian refugee who is a stranger as a favour to a friend in Cairo, the narrator becomes mired in Kafkaesque bureaucracy while pursuing his Antigone-like mission. As an Egyptian Copt, he mines the dark comedy of living in Britain as a Christian Arab, while, as befits a life straddling two continents, the setting is the notional meridian sundering East from West. Katharine Halls’ translation deftly conveys the mordant wit, pathos and freshness of the Arabic original.”

The winning author and translator will be revealed on 2 July at an awards ceremony at the EBRD’s headquarters in London. Prize money of €20,000 will be divided equally between the winning author and translator. The authors and translators of the other two finalist works will each receive €2,000.

The EBRD Literature Prize has been running since 2018 and is an annual award for a work of literary fiction originally written in a language of an economy where the Bank invests, translated into English and published in the past year, by a publisher based in Europe, North America or in a territory where the Bank operates.