The African literary world is celebrating as Sudanese author Leila Aboulela receives the 2025 PEN Pinter Prize. The announcement was made at English PEN’s summer party, where actors Khalid Abdalla and Amira Ghazalla brought Aboulela’s words to life with powerful readings from her work.
Aboulela will officially receive the award on October 10 at the British Library in London. At this ceremony, she will also reveal her choice for the PEN Pinter Writer of Courage award, an honor reserved for an author “active in defence of freedom of expression, often at great risk to their own safety and liberty.”
In a moving statement, Aboulela reflected on the significance of this recognition:
“This comes as a complete and utter surprise. Thank you English PEN and the judges for considering my work worthy of this award. I am honoured to win a prize established in memory of Harold Pinter, a great writer who continues to inspire so much loyalty and consistent high regard. For someone like me, a Muslim Sudanese immigrant who writes from a religious perspective probing the limits of secular tolerance, this recognition feels truly significant. It brings expansion and depth to the meaning of freedom of expression and whose stories get heard.”
This year’s judges include Ruth Borthwick (British arts administrator and literature executive), Mona Arshi FRSL (award-winning British poet and novelist), and Nadifa Mohamed FRSL (Somali-British novelist). Mohamed praised Aboulela’s work for its “commitment” to the “lives and decisions of Muslim women,” how she centers both their “struggles and pleasures with dignity.” She also noted the timeliness of such a work: “In a world seemingly on fire, and with immense suffering unmarked and little mourned in Sudan, Gaza, and beyond, her writing is a balm, a shelter, and an inspiration.”
Aboulela is a prominent voice in the global literary space for her celebration and examination of the lives of Muslim women. Her writing has been translated into 15 languages. She has published 11 books, with River Spirit, Lyrics Alley, and Translator gaining high critical acclaim. She is also know for being the inaugural winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing when it was launched in 2000, an award that would go on to define 21st century African fiction.
The PEN Pinter Prize, established in 2009, honors writers of outstanding literary merit who, in the spirit of Harold Pinter, cast an “unflinching, unswerving gaze upon the world” and display a “fierce intellectual determination to define the real truth of our lives and our societies.” Their work draws public attention to literature that engages with contemporary realities and injustices. Past African recipients include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2018) and Tsitsi Dangaremgba (2021).
Congrats to Aboulela! This is a well-deserved win. Her work truly challenges the boundaries of whose stories are heard and brings a whole new meaning to the idea of freedom of expression in a way that makes sense for our time.
source/content: brittlepaper.com (headline edited)
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SCOTLAND / SUDANESE