The National Book Foundation’s 2025 longlist for Translated Literature spans nine languages and ten countries, offering readers an extraordinary glimpse into the global imagination. It includes works originally written in Arabic, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and, for the first time, Uzbek. These books confront war and memory, identity and desire, technology and history. They also showcase the artistry of translators, who carry voices across languages and cultures with care and invention. Here is an introduction to each contender.
On the Calculation of Volume (Book III)
Author: Solvej Balle
Original Language: Danish
Translators: Sophia Hersi Smith & Jennifer Russell
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
In the third book of Solvej Balle’s ambitious seven-volume cycle, Tara Selter remains trapped in a single day—November 18th—but now discovers she is not alone. The story shifts from solitude to a fragile exploration of connection and shared experience.
Smith and Russell’s translation captures the crisp, reflective quality of Balle’s Danish prose, balancing philosophical precision with emotional resonance. Both translators have been central to bringing contemporary Danish voices into English; they live in Copenhagen and frequently co-translate authors such as Tove Ditlevsen, Marianne Larsen, and Rakel Haslund-Gjerrild.
Published in November 2025 by New Directions, this installment continues a series already acclaimed in Europe for its scope and ambition.
We Computers: A Ghazal Novel
Author: Hamid Ismailov
Original Language: Uzbek
Translator: Shelley Fairweather-Vega
Publisher: Yale University Press (Margellos World Republic of Letters)
Hamid Ismailov’s novel fuses digital speculation with centuries-old poetic form. In the late 1980s, French poet Jon-Perse builds a computer capable of learning the ghazal. The book meditates on authorship, artificial intelligence, and the strange symbiosis between human curiosity and machine potential.
Fairweather-Vega’s translation carries the lyricism of Uzbek into English with elegance, preserving both musicality and playful experimentation. She is a leading translator of Central Asian literature and has long collaborated with Ismailov, most notably on The Devils’ Dance.
Published in August 2025 by Yale University Press, this is the first Uzbek title ever longlisted for the National Book Award in Translation.
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The Queen of Swords
Author: Jazmina Barrera
Original Language: Spanish
Translator: Christina MacSweeney
Publisher: Two Lines Press
This hybrid work pieces together the life of Mexican writer Elena Garro (1916–1998), drawing from photographs, letters, and journals to paint a portrait of a woman whose complexity often eluded even her closest companions. The result is both biography and meditation on how we remember literary figures.
MacSweeney’s translation renders Barrera’s Spanish with clarity and intimacy, maintaining its archival sensitivity while giving Garro’s story fresh resonance in English. MacSweeney has translated major contemporary Latin American writers, including Valeria Luiselli and Elvira Navarro.
Published in 2025 by Two Lines Press, this book situates Elena Garro’s legacy within a broader conversation about literature, politics, and memory.
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We Are Green and Trembling
Author: Gabriela Cabezón Cámara
Original Language: Spanish
Translator: Robin Myers
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
Reimagining the life of Antonio de Erauso, a convent runaway who became a soldier in the Spanish conquest, this novel is written as letters to a prioress aunt. It confronts gender, colonial violence, and personal transformation with subversive power.
Robin Myers translates Cámara’s vigorous Spanish prose with precision and lyric intensity. Based in Mexico City, she has co-translated works by Cristina Rivera Garza and is widely recognized for her contributions to contemporary Latin American literature in English.
Published in 2025 by New Directions, this book pushes historical fiction into urgent contemporary debates about identity and violence.
The Remembered Soldier
Author: Anjet Daanje
Original Language: Dutch
Translator: David McKay
Publisher: New Vessel Press
Set after World War I, this haunting novel follows Noon Merckem, an amnesiac veteran taken home from a psychiatric asylum by a woman who claims to be his wife. Both are haunted by memory’s gaps and the unhealed wounds of war.
David McKay’s translation conveys the psychological precision and lyrical weight of the Dutch original. McKay is one of the leading Dutch–English translators today, known for his work on Multatuli’s Max Havelaar and novels by Stefan Hertmans.
Published in 2025 by New Vessel Press, the book has already been hailed in Europe as a major achievement in historical fiction.
Hunchback
Author: Saou Ichikawa
Original Language: Japanese
Translator: Polly Barton
Publisher: Hogarth / Penguin Random House
Shaka, born with congenital myotubular myopathy and reliant on a wheelchair and ventilator, lives boldly in the online world—posting erotic stories, tweeting provocatively, and pursuing desire on her own terms. The novel examines ableism and sexual agency in contemporary society.
Polly Barton’s translation captures Ichikawa’s vivid, sharp Japanese voice. Barton has translated works by Kikuko Tsumura and Misumi Kubo, and in 2019 she won the Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize for her memoir Fifty Sounds.
Published in 2025 by Hogarth, this is Ichikawa’s first work translated into English.
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We Do Not Part
Author: Han Kang
Original Language: Korean
Translators: e. yaewon & Paige Aniyah Morris
Publisher: Hogarth / Penguin Random House
Set on Jeju Island after the Korean War, the novel follows Kyungha as she travels through a snowstorm to care for her friend’s pet bird, a journey that mirrors deeper historical and emotional landscapes.
The English translation by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris has been praised for retaining Han Kang’s lyrical tone and thoughtful silences. Both translators are well-regarded in the field—Paige Morris is a fiction writer and translator, and e. yaewon, based in Korea, has translated several significant contemporary voices.
Published in 2025 by Hogarth, the novel extends Han Kang’s revered body of work, which includes The Vegetarian and Human Acts.
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Sleep Phase
Author: Mohamed Kheir
Original Language: Arabic
Translator: Robin Moger
Publisher: Two Lines Press
After seven years in prison, Warif returns to a Cairo altered by expats and bureaucrats, where officialdom, displacement, and socio-political changes create a disorienting cityscape. The novel’s style is often described as surreal and fragmented, exploring themes of memory, loss, and freedom of speech.
Robin Moger, based in Cape Town, has translated major contemporary Arabic authors such as Youssef Rakha and Haytham El-Wardany, bringing nuanced stylistic sensitivity to Sleep Phase.
Published in May 2025 by Two Lines Press, the novel engages urgent questions of belonging and autonomy in post-incarceration life.
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Perfection
Author: Vincenzo Latronico
Original Language: Italian
Translator: Sophie Hughes
Publisher: New York Review Books
Anna and Tom, millennial expats in Berlin, build a life of curated aesthetics in design, travel, and culture, yet beneath the surface they find only disillusionment and longing.
Sophie Hughes’s translation brings Latronico’s Italian prose into sharp relief, reflecting both irony and desire as the couple grapples with the gap between appearance and authenticity. Hughes, a previous National Book Award longlistee, is widely respected for her translations of Latin American and European literature.
Published in 2025 by New York Review Books, Perfection explores contemporary anxieties about work, identity, and the performance of happiness.
Sad Tiger
Author: Neige Sinno
Original Language: French
Translator: Natasha Lehrer
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Sad Tiger is part memoir and part literary criticism. It recounts Sinno’s experiences of incest and includes reflections on authors who confronted similar taboos, from Nabokov to Morrison. The result is both devastating and illuminating, a work that searches for language to confront the unspeakable.
Natasha Lehrer’s translation channels the raw emotional power and intellectual rigor of the original French text. Lehrer, a prize-winning translator (Scott Moncrieff Prize, 2016), has translated authors such as Chantal Thomas and is known for her sensitive handling of feminist and political subjects.
Published in 2025 by Seven Stories Press, Sad Tiger has quickly been acclaimed for its boldness and emotional depth.
Order from Seven Stories Press
This year’s longlist highlights how translation broadens the horizons of literature, carrying voices across languages and cultures while addressing themes from memory and technology to identity and resilience. The shortlist will be published in partnership with The New York Times on October 7, 2025, and the winners will be named during the 76th National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner on November 19, 2025.