Five titles have been shortlisted for the 2026 National Book Award for Translated Literature, organisers announced on October 6, following the release of longlists in September, per bookriot.com.
The winner will be announced in November at the National Book Award Ceremony and Dinner in New York.
The shortlisted books are The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated from Norwegian by Martin Aitken; Centroeuropa by Vicente Luis Mora, translated from Spanish by Rahul Bery; Night of a Thousand Hells by Intan Paramaditha, translated from Indonesian by Stephen Epstein and Tiffany Tsao; Pure Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, translated from French by Lara Vergnaud; and Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life: Voices of Survival and Witness in Gaza by Samar Yazbek, translated from Arabic by Leri Price.
Each finalist will receive $1,000, while the winner in each category receives $10,000 and a bronze sculpture. The awards are presented across five categories.
The list spans fiction, historical mystery and documentary testimony. Knausgaard’s The School of Night is the fourth novel in his Morning Star sextet. Mora’s Centroeuropa is set in wartime Europe and combines historical fiction with literary experimentation.
Paramaditha’s Night of a Thousand Hells blends family epic, folklore and horror to explore gender inequity and tradition. Sarr’s Pure Men examines masculinity and social norms in contemporary Senegal. Yazbek’s Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life gathers first-hand testimonies of survival in Gaza.
The Translated Literature panel includes Fairweather-Vega, Javier García del Moral, John Keene, Christopher Merrill and Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi.
The National Book Awards, among the most prestigious literary prizes in the United States, have included a category for Translated Literature since 2018 to recognise the growing contribution of international writing and translators to the American literary landscape.