National Book Awards open with seven languages and a first for Indonesian
Indonesian has reached the United States National Book Awards in translation for the first time.
The National Book Foundation announced its 2026 longlists for Translated Literature and Young People's Literature on 16 September. The lists open the autumn narrowing from eligible books to finalists and then winners, according to Publishing Perspectives.
The Translated Literature longlist holds 10 books first written in seven languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, Indonesian, Norwegian, Russian and Spanish. That spread includes Indonesian for the first time in the history of the category, which honours books rendered into English.
A longlist, in prize terms, is the first public cut. It comes before finalists and a winner.
Among the translated titles named are My Dreadful Body by Egana Djabbarova, translated from Russian by Lisa C. Hayden, and Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue, translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. The list also includes Eden at Dawn by Karim Kattan, translated from French by Jeffrey Zuckerman, and The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated from Norwegian by Martin Aitken.
Two more are To the East of the East by Ping Lu, translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang, and Centroeuropa by Vicente Luis Mora, translated from Spanish by Rahul Bery. The full group of 10 comprises nine novels and one work of nonfiction, according to the National Book Foundation.
The judges sorted through 159 books submitted for the Translated Literature prize. The panel is Shelley Fairweather-Vega, Javier García del Moral, John Keene, Christopher Merrill as chair, and Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi. Books published in the US between 1 December 2025 and 30 November 2026 qualify for this year's awards.
The Young People's Literature longlist also holds 10 titles, according to Book Riot. It includes The Free Verse Society by Delali Adjoa and When Tomorrow Burns by Tae Keller, according to The New Yorker. The category covers books written for young readers.
For readers, this means two entry points to the season. Translation offers writing first published abroad and now available in English. Young People's Literature tracks what librarians, teachers and booksellers are putting in front of teenagers and children.
What happens next is shared across the programme. Finalists in all five categories will be revealed on Tuesday, 6 October. Five books will survive in each group. The five categories are Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature and Young People's Literature, with 25 finalists in total and one winner to be named in each.
