English PEN and the Booker Prize Foundation are delighted to announce the winners of the inaugural round of PEN Presents x International Booker Prize – an edition of the English PEN award for sample translations, launched in partnership with the Booker Prize Foundation to support translators from the Global Majority.
The six winning projects include:
- Sample translations of six titles representing five languages and five regions
- The first PEN Presents winners showcasing work originally published in Malay, Filipino and Cebuano, and the first from the Philippines
- Previous PEN Presents winner and International Booker Prize-longlisted translator Tiffany Tsao, along with five translators selected for the programme for the first time
- Translation samples that are ‘stunningly different in voice and style and theme, and stunningly alike in their brilliance’.
Since 2016, submissions to both English PEN’s PEN Translates programme and the International Booker Prize have told the same story: while the representation of authors of the Global Majority is increasing, translators from the Global Majority remain significantly underrepresented. PEN Presents x International Booker Prize was launched in 2024 to address this disparity by funding and promoting the work of Global Majority translators so that more literature in translation, created by more people, reaches English-language readers.
The six winners were chosen from a shortlist of 12 samples, by a cross-sector panel of seven experts, chaired by Preti Taneja, writer, Professor of World Literature and Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and English PEN Translation Advisory Co-chair. She was joined by Safae El-Ouahabi, Associate at RCW; Elisabeth Jaquette, translator from the Arabic and Executive Director of Words Without Borders; Željka Marošević, Editorial Director at Jonathan Cape; Nii Ayikwei Parkes, writer, editor and Director at flipped eye publishing; Fiammetta Rocco, Administrator of the International Booker Prize; and Shash Trevett, poet and translator from the Tamil.
The shortlisted translators were awarded £500 grants to create 5,000-word samples of their proposed works. Independent assessors, drawn from English PEN’s pool of established literary translators, were commissioned to evaluate the samples and original works, before the selection panel then selected six projects as PEN Presents x International Booker Prize winners.
The winning translators have received editorial support from English PEN and worked with experienced editors over the last month, and their samples are now available to read on the English PEN website here. These projects will be promoted to publishers and commissioning editors in the UK and the wider Anglophone publishing landscape. Half of all PEN Presents-winning projects have since been acquired by publishers.
The winning translators are:
- John Bengan for a translation from the Cebuano of The Man with a Thousand Names: Stories by R. Joseph Dazo (Philippines)
- Christian Jil R. Benitez for a translation from the Filipino of Time of the Eye by Alvin B. Yapan (Philippines)
- Pauline Fan for a translation from the Malay of The Last Days of Jesselton by Ruhaini Matdarin (Malaysia)
- Mayada Ibrahim and Najlaa Eltom for a translation from the Arabic of Ireme by Stella Gaitano (Sudan)
- Tiffany Tsao for a translation from the Indonesian of The Born Out of Wedlock Club by Grace Tioso (Indonesia)
- Anam Zafar for a translation from the Arabic of Playing with Soldiers by Tariq Asrawi (Palestine)
Preti Taneja, Chair of the selection panel and English PEN Translation Advisory Co-chair, said:
‘These samples showcase the very best of what the PEN Presents x International Booker Prize round aims to support. Bringing a range of expertise and with unanimous feeling, the panel and I are very proud to support these translators as their samples make their way into the Anglophone world.’
Fiammetta Rocco, Administrator of the International Booker Prize, said:
‘PEN Presents x International Booker Prize was born out of a joint desire to platform, fund and support the best fiction translators from the Global Majority, who are currently chronically underrepresented in the UK publishing landscape.
‘The translator of this year’s International Booker Prize winner, Heart Lamp, Deepa Bhasthi, was both the first working from Kannada – a major language spoken by an estimated 65 million people – and the first translator from the Global Majority to win the prize. The short story collection, written by Indian activist and lawyer Banu Mushtaq, found its UK publisher after a translation sample was selected in an earlier round of PEN Presents, which highlights just how vital the programme is.
‘It’s exciting that so many of this inaugural cohort of talented winners – which include translators working from five languages and five regions – might bring a new readership to these works, with five of the authors of the showcase samples never having books translated into English and published in the UK before. We look forward to seeing what they do next.’
Will Forrester, Head of Literature Programmes, English PEN, said:
‘These six samples are stunningly different in voice and style and theme, and stunningly alike in their brilliance. They speak to why English PEN and the Booker Prize Foundation have partnered on this project: through concerted work in recognition of translators from the Global Majority, these exceptional titles, authors and translators have emerged. They represent several linguistic and regional “firsts” for both organisations.
‘From what the selection panel call the “humour, warmth, and unflinching honesty” of The Man with a Thousand Names to the “lyrical and empathetic” The Last Days of Jesselton; from the “playfully witty and thoughtful exploration of diasporic identity” in The Born Out of Wedlock Club to the “vibrant and important multi-generational epic set against conflict and tension” of Ireme; from Playing with Soldiers’ wrenchingly beautiful depiction of childhood fun and childhood pain in Palestine to a hauntingly lyrical depiction of sixty years of personal and historical saga in the Philippines in Time of the Eye, we know these projects will beguile editors and, thereafter, English-language readers across the world.’
PEN Presents supports and showcases sample translations, funding the often-unpaid work of creating samples and giving UK publishers access to titles from underrepresented languages and regions. The International Booker Prize is the world’s most influential award for translated fiction and each year it awards the best work of fiction translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland.
Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from the Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, a previous PEN Presents winner, won the International Booker Prize 2025. The collection, which emerged through the first round of PEN Presents in 2022 before being published by And Other Stories, is the first work translated from Kannada and the first collection of short stories to win the International Booker Prize – underscoring the impact of the initiative.