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Find The New Yorker’s announcement here.
The National Book Foundation today announced the Longlist for the 2025 National Book Award for Translated Literature with The New Yorker. The Finalists in all five categories will be revealed on Tuesday, October 7 with the New York Times; Winners will be announced live at the 76th National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner on Wednesday, November 19, 2025.
The ten titles on this year’s Translated Literature Longlist were originally published in nine different languages: Arabic, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Uzbek. This marks the first time a work translated from the Uzbek appears on the Translated Literature Longlist. Three authors and translators have been previously recognized by the National Book Award for Translated Literature. Solvej Balle was Longlisted in 2024 for On the Calculation of Volume (Book I). Sophie Hughes was Longlisted for her translations of Hurricane Season in 2020 and of This Is Not Miami in 2023, both written by Fernanda Melchor. Hughes was also Longlisted in 2024 for her translation of Layla Martinez’s debut novel, Woodworm, co-translated with Annie McDermott. Christina MacSweeney was Longlisted in 2021 for her translation of Elvira Navarro’s Rabbit Island: Stories.
The authors and translators on the list have been recognized by numerous international prizes, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Cámara Nacional de la Industria Editorial Mexicana’s Book of the Year Award, the Dublin Literary Award, the International Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Awards, the Sawiris Cultural Award, the Scott Moncrieff Prize, and the Nobel Prize in Literature, among others.
The 2025 Translated Longlist considers our shared and diverging realities, and what it means to be human. In the third installment of Solvej Balle’s seven-part series, On the Calculation of Volume (Book III), translated from Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell, Tara Selter learns that she is no longer alone in her endless November day. A profound meditation on loneliness, the power of connection, and the subtle and often untraceable ways in which we move through time and space, Balle asks readers to consider what we owe to one another and to the world we all share. In the late 1980s, French poet and psychologist Jon‑Perse becomes captivated with computers, and wonders if this promising invention is capable of analyzing, translating, and creating literature. After becoming enamored with Persian poetry, Jon‑Perse builds an artificial intelligence program in Hamid Ismailov’s We Computers: A Ghazal Novel, translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega. At once poetic and historical, We Computers raises questions about authorship, digital intelligence, and the very nature of art and human curiosity.
Two Longlisted titles consider what it means to live a full life in contemporary society—in person and online. In Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection, Anna and Tom, a millennial expat couple living as digital nomads in Berlin, lead seemingly ideal lives in a beautifully decorated apartment, surrounded by other expats and an ever-growing slate of cultural activities. As their friends move back home, the couple remains, bored and perpetually chasing authenticity and a sense of meaning in this translation from the Italian by Sophie Hughes. Saou Ichikawa’s debut novel Hunchback follows Shaka, who was born with a congenital muscle disorder and relies on an electric wheelchair and a ventilator. Shaka is deeply immersed in her virtual life and finds herself pushing boundaries in a realm where physical constraints are immaterial—taking online courses, trolling on social media, publishing explicit fan fiction, and unapologetically seeking pleasure. Translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton, this novel invites readers to question the sexism and ableism that run rampant in society—and, often unconsciously, in ourselves—as well as the power dynamics that intersect with conceptions of autonomy, disability, and desirability.
Inspired by real-life experiences and figures, three 2025 Longlisted titles play with genre and form to create room for queer, trans, and female stories. We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated by Robin Myers, is based on the real-life figure Antonio de Erauso, who was raised in a Basque convent and fled to the New World during the Spanish conquest. In this subversive historical fiction, Antonio recounts his explorations—as a former conquistador now caring for two young Indigenous girls—in letters to his prioress aunt that examine gender identity, religion, and the intrinsic violence of colonialism. Centuries later and in another part of the hemisphere, we meet the influential Mexican writer Elena Garro (1916-1998), whose life is stitched together through archival research into a work of nonfiction by Jazmina Barrera. Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney, The Queen of Swords paints the portrait of an influential writer, mother, socialite, and activist who—despite troves of photographs, journals, letters, and published works—might never be fully known to her loved ones, or her readers. In Sad Tiger, Neige Sinno chronicles years of sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather, alongside a close reading of literary works that depict incest and pedophilia by Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, and others. A blend of memoir and literary criticism translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer, Sad Tiger challenges society’s role in enabling and mischaracterizing abuse, and a guide for how to speak about the unthinkable.
To tackle the painful realities that follow war, three Longlisters blur surrealism and fantasy, and question memory—mirroring the disembodiment and devastation of generations. In Han Kang’s We Do Not Part, a recently injured Inseon asks her friend Kyungha to return to Jeju Island after the Korean War to care for her beloved pet bird. As Kyungha travels in the middle of a snowstorm to fulfill her friend’s wishes, she wonders if she will survive the storm, let alone the darkness waiting ahead. Translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, the novel unveils a hidden chapter of Korean history and, through the story of two friends, questions how legacies are preserved even—and especially—in the face of unimaginable tragedy. Upon his release after seven years in prison, translator Warif finds his native Cairo irrevocably changed—the city has been overtaken by expats, and foreigners are running government offices, making it nearly impossible for him to return to the job he loved and his old life in Mohamed Kheir’s Sleep Phase. In this disorienting tale, translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger, reality, memory, and fantasy intertwine as the novel examines life post-incarceration and interrogates free speech, colonialism, and globalization. In Anjet Daanje’s The Remembered Soldier, amnesiac veteran Noon Merckem—found without any identifying information after World War I—lives in a psychiatric asylum, visited by countless women searching for their missing husbands. A woman who claims she is his wife takes him home against medical advice and attempts to rebuild their lives, but they are both haunted by unreliable memories and the enduring traumas of war in this translation from the Dutch by David McKay.
Publishers submitted a total of 139 books for the 2025 National Book Award for Translated Literature. The judges for Translated Literature are Stesha Brandon (Chair), Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón, Bill Johnston, Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel, and Karen Tei Yamashita. Judges’ decisions are made independently of the National Book Foundation staff and Board of Directors, and deliberations are strictly confidential. For more information about the 76th National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner and to register for the livestream, please visit nationalbook.org/awards.
Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume (Book III)
Translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell
New Directions Publishing
Jazmina Barrera, The Queen of Swords
Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
Two Lines Press
Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, We Are Green and Trembling
Translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers
New Directions Publishing
Anjet Daanje, The Remembered Soldier
Translated from the Dutch by David McKay
New Vessel Press
Saou Ichikawa, Hunchback
Translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton
Hogarth / Penguin Random House
Hamid Ismailov, We Computers: A Ghazal Novel
Translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega
Yale University Press
Han Kang, We Do Not Part
Translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris
Hogarth / Penguin Random House
Mohamed Kheir, Sleep Phase
Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger
Two Lines Press
Vincenzo Latronico, Perfection
Translated from the Italian by Sophie Hughes
New York Review Books
Neige Sinno, Sad Tiger
Translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer
Seven Stories Press
