Awards season is upon us, and all week long, the National Book Award judges will be releasing their 2026 longlists across five categories. These are among the most prestigious honors bestowed upon books in a given year.
The National Book Awards began in 1936 by the American Booksellers Association, took a break during World War II, and then resumed under the leadership of several collaborating book industry organizations in 1950. A few decades later, the National Book Foundation took over, with the goal of ensuring these books are not only honored but that their impact is felt across the country in a real, meaningful way.
The National Book Awards honor books written by U.S. authors for books published in the United States. The five categories include Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature. Starting in 2013, the Foundation elected to present a longlist in each category, composed of 10 titles and released in September. Those longlists are whittled down to a finalist shortlist and shared in October–this year, on October 6–as a run-up to the awards. The National Book Awards Ceremony and Dinner, where winners will be announced in each category, will be on November 18. Finalists each take home $1,000, while the winner in each category receives $10,000 and a bronze sculpture.
Today, the National Book Awards presented their Longlist for Translated Literature. The list includes translations from seven different languages, and it is the first time a novel published in Indonesian and translated into English has landed on this list. Nearly 160 books were submitted for consideration.
The 10 longlisted titles for the 2026 National Book Award for Translated Literature are:
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- My Dreadful Body by Egana Djabbarova, Translated from Russian by Lisa C. Hayden
- Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue, Translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
- Eden at Dawn by Karim Kattan, Translated from French by Jeffrey Zuckerman
- The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Translated from Norwegian by Martin Aitken
- To the East of the East by Ping Lu, Translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang
- 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
- The Disappearing Act by Maria Stepanova, Translated from Russian by Sasha Dugdale
- Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life: Voices of Survival and Witness in Gaza by Samar Yazbek, Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price
This year’s judges for the National Book Awards in Translated Literature are Shelley Fairweather-Vega, Javier García del Moral, John Keene, Christopher Merrill, and Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi.
More information about the National Book Awards is available on their website. Keep your eyes peeled for the rest of the longlists this week!
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