Here is the 2026 National Book Award Shortlist for Translated Literature

“Ingenious… Knausgaard masterfully charts his antihero’s ascending ambition and the encroaching forces that eventually snuff it out. It’s a remarkable addition to an exciting and disturbing series.” —Publishers Weekly

“Riveting… This fourth novel in Knausgaard’s Morning Star sextet squarely inhabits the series’s prevailing mood: realism undercut by a hint of the preternatural.… In Martin Aitken’s translation, the prose is fluent and nimble, the imagery possessed of a steely melancholia.” —The Times Literary Supplement (UK)

“Centroeuropa not only provides a timely reminder of the death toll mounted by profiteering warmongering leaders, but at the same time also deconstructs narrative conventions, analyzes the artifice of identity, and critiques the capitalist patriarchal system, all while succeeding as an engaging and entertaining mystery told in an evocative period setting.” —Arts Fuse

“Mora populates [Centroeuropa] with a cast of memorable characters…on the way to a last act that features both nightmarish imagery and a stirring finale. The result will appeal to readers who like their historical novels with an eccentric twist and a dash of Nabokovian playfulness.” —Publishers Weekly

“An unforgiving tale of political horror and womanhood by a writer that is fearless.”—Mariana Enriquez

“Paramaditha writes effortlessly across genres, blending dysfunctional family epic, haunting folklore and horror, with themes of suffocating traditions, pervasive gender inequity, and LGBTQ+ discrimination and identities… Provocative, chilling.”—Shelf Awareness

“Magnificently translated by Vergnaud…Sarr’s prose is philosophical, sardonic, witty but most of all, exquisite…A heart-wrenching examination of what it means to be an authentic man in patriarchal modern Africa.” —Booklist

“Sarr offers a bold challenge to Senegalese norms…Readers will be left with much to ponder.” —Publishers Weekly

“Since the start of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, I have been grasping for words. Yazbek has done something extraordinary. She has captured the vocabulary we have all been searching for by turning to the people who witnessed this violence firsthand in Gaza…. She has once again modeled what it means to be a keeper of humanity’s memory.” —Tareq Baconi

“Yazbek documents humanity at both its most broken and most resilient…This is not an easy book to read, but it is an essential one.” —Buzz Magazine