Every year, France, Japan, Brazil and more crown their best book. Spin the globe to see which ones you can read in English, and which are still waiting.
4,667 books · 44 prizes · 39 countries
Awarded each November by the National Book Foundation in New York to a work of fiction or nonfiction translated into English from any language and published in the United States; author and translator must be living.
National Book Award 2026 · Finalist
Malam Seribu Jahanam
Novel · 384 pages · Family
Translated by Stephen J. Epstein, Tiffany Tsao
AI-generated summary:In 1991 a grandmother foretells the futures of her three granddaughters: one will wander, one will stay behind and keep watch, and one will become a bride.
National Book Award 2026 · Finalist
Nattskolen
Karl Ove Knausgaard · 55 when first published
Novel · 512 pages · Morgenstjernen, book 4
Translated by Martin Aitken
AI-generated summary:In 1985 an ambitious young Norwegian, Kristian Hadeland, moves to London to study photography, where he falls in with an older Dutchman obsessed with technology.
National Book Award 2026 · Finalist
De purs hommes
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr · 28 when first published
Novel · 208 pages · Politics, Love
Translated by Lara Vergnaud
AI-generated summary:In Senegal, a disillusioned young literature teacher becomes obsessed with a viral video in which a crowd drags a dead man's body out of a cemetery because he was said to be homosexual.
National Book Award 2026 · Finalist
ذاكرة النقصان · Dhakirat al-nuqsan
Samar Yazbek · 55 when first published
Nonfiction · 256 pages · War, Politics
Translated by Leri Price
AI-generated summary:Wounded survivors of the war in Gaza tell their stories to a Syrian writer, who records their memories so that they are heard as people with names and lives, not as numbers.
National Book Award 2026 · Finalist
Centroeuropa
Vicente Luis Mora · 50 when first published
Novel · 192 pages · Historical, War
Translated by Rahul Bery
AI-generated summary:One winter in the early nineteenth century, a settler on the Oder at Prussia's border with Poland digs a grave for his wife in the frozen ground and strikes the body of a hussar.
National Book Award 2025 · Winner
Las niñas del naranjel
Gabriela Cabezón Cámara · 55 when first published
Novel · Historical
Translated by Robin Myers
AI-generated summary:In the seventeenth-century South American jungle, a runaway conquistador who was born a girl in Spain flees with two starving young girls and begins a letter to the aunt who runs the convent he escaped as a novice.
National Book Award 2025 · Finalist
De herinnerde soldaat
Anjet Daanje · 54 when first published
Novel · 576 pages · War, Love, Historical
Translated by David McKay
AI-generated summary:During the First World War a soldier is found just behind the Belgian front, unharmed but with no idea who he is; four years after the war he is returned to a wife and children he cannot remember.
National Book Award 2025 · Finalist
Бизким—компютерлар ё дунёнинг энг гўзал шоири · Bizkim – komputerlar, yo dunyoning eng go'zal shoiri
Hamid Ismailov · 68 when first published
Novel · 296 pages
Translated by Shelley Fairweather-Vega
National Book Award 2025 · Finalist
Triste tigre
Neige Sinno · 46 when first published
Nonfiction · 288 pages · Autofiction, Family
Translated by Natasha Lehrer
AI-generated summary:A writer recounts how her stepfather raped her from the age of seven to fourteen, in a family living on the margins in the Alps in the 1990s, and asks whether such things can be told at all.
Also: Goncourt 2023 shortlist
National Book Award 2025 · Finalist
Om udregning af rumfang III
Solvej Balle · 59 when first published
Novel · Speculative · Om udregning af rumfang, book 3
Translated by Sophia Hersi Smith, Jennifer Russell
AI-generated summary:On day 1,144 of a repeating eighteenth of November, a woman trapped in the same date finds she is no longer alone: a man named Henry Dale is caught in the loop too.
National Book Award 2024 · Winner
臺灣漫遊錄 · Taiwan manyou lu
Yáng Shuāng-zǐ · 36 when first published
Novel · 320 pages · Historical
Translated by Lin King
AI-generated summary:In 1938, in Japanese-ruled Taiwan, a young Japanese writer travels the island by train with her Taiwanese interpreter, and a friendship grows between them over the dishes they share.
Also: International Booker 2026 winner
National Book Award 2024 · Finalist
حارس سطح العالم · Haris sath al-'alam
Bothayna Al-Essa · 37 when first published
Novel · 272 pages · Speculative, Politics
Translated by Ranya Abdelrahman, Sawad Hussain
AI-generated summary:In a future state that has outlawed imagination, a government book censor reads every manuscript line by line to stop anything carrying ideas or meaning from reaching readers.
National Book Award 2024 · Finalist
La danse du vilain
Fiston Mwanza Mujila · 39 when first published
Novel · 263 pages
Translated by Roland Glasser
AI-generated summary:Fed up with life at home, a boy leaves his parents to join the street children who live on the forecourt of the post office in Lubumbashi, a city sliding into chaos.
National Book Award 2024 · Finalist
Ædnan
Linnea Axelsson · 38 when first published
Poetry · 448 pages · Historical, Family
Translated by Saskia Vogel
AI-generated summary:Early in the twentieth century, a Sámi family follows its herd along the old migration trail to summer grazing on a Norwegian island. Soon a closed border will cut them off from that life.
Also: Augustpriset 2018 winner
National Book Award 2024 · Finalist
مقام الريح · Maqam al-rih
Samar Yazbek · 51 when first published
Novel · War, Politics
Translated by Leri Price
AI-generated summary:A wounded young soldier lies on a Syrian mountaintop between death and life, piecing his past back together, from his childhood in a remote village in the coastal mountains.
National Book Award 2023 · Winner
A palavra que resta
Stênio Gardel · 41 when first published
Novel · 160 pages · Love, Family
Translated by Bruna Dantas Lobato
AI-generated summary:At seventy-one, an illiterate man from the Brazilian backlands decides to learn to read so he can open a letter he has kept for more than fifty years, written by the man he secretly loved.
National Book Award 2023 · Finalist
Over de gekte van een vrouw
Astrid Roemer · 35 when first published
Novel · 257 pages · Love, Family
Translated by Lucy Scott
AI-generated summary:When eighteen-year-old Noenka leaves home to work as a teacher in Suriname, she is drawn into a society seething with clashing beliefs and aggression, and leaves her violent husband after nine days.
National Book Award 2023 · Finalist
저주토끼 · Jeoju tokki
Bora Chung · 41 when first published
Short stories · 256 pages · Speculative
Translated by Anton Hur
AI-generated summary:Ten tales of horror, science fiction and fantasy shaped like folktales and legends, in which revenge returns again and again: a cursed rabbit aimed at a rival liquor maker, a head that rises from a toilet calling a woman mother.
Also: International Booker 2022 shortlist
National Book Award 2023 · Finalist
La porte du voyage sans retour
David Diop · 55 when first published
Novel · 256 pages · Historical, Love
Translated by Sam Taylor
AI-generated summary:In 1750 a young French botanist arrives in Senegal to study its plants and becomes obsessed with the story of a young African woman said to have escaped being sold into slavery.
National Book Award 2023 · Finalist
Los abismos
Pilar Quintana · 49 when first published
Novel · 168 pages · Family, Coming of age
Translated by Lisa Dillman
AI-generated summary:In Cali, a girl watches her parents' troubled marriage with unusual sharpness, trying to piece together what the adults leave unsaid or only half say.
National Book Award 2022 · Winner
Siete casas vacías
Samanta Schweblin · 37 when first published
Short stories · 208 pages
Translated by Megan McDowell
AI-generated summary:Seven stories revolve around seven empty houses, following people who seem to be thinking seriously about going mad, and the ordinary fears and prejudices of those who watch them.
National Book Award 2022 · Finalist
Eit nytt namn
Jon Fosse · 62 when first published
Novel · 232 pages · Septologien, book 3
Translated by Damion Searls
AI-generated summary:As Christmas nears on a fjord north of Bergen, an ageing painter feels he has finished with painting, while his namesake and double prepares to spend Christmas with his neighbour and the neighbour's sister.
Also: International Booker 2022 shortlist · Brage 2021 winner
National Book Award 2022 · Finalist
Mandíbula
Mónica Ojeda · 30 when first published
Novel · 285 pages · Crime, Coming of age
Translated by Sarah Booker
AI-generated summary:A teenage horror fan wakes up tied up in a dark cabin in the woods, kidnapped by the young literature teacher whom she and her friends tormented for months at their elite Opus Dei school.
National Book Award 2022 · Finalist
Kibogo est monté au ciel
Scholastique Mukasonga · 64 when first published
Novel · 152 pages · Historical, Satire
Translated by Mark Polizzotti
AI-generated summary:In colonial Rwanda, as mass baptisms follow the deposing of a king who refused the faith, villagers weigh the missionaries' Jesus against their own legend of a royal son who rose to heaven and brought back the rain.
National Book Award 2022 · Finalist
地球にちりばめられて · Chikyū ni chiribamerarete
Yoko Tawada · 58 when first published
Novel · 309 pages · Speculative, Migration
Translated by Margaret Mitsutani
AI-generated summary:A young woman whose island homeland disappeared while she was studying in Europe gets by in a language of her own making, and sets out with a linguistics student to find anyone who still speaks her mother tongue.
National Book Award 2021 · Winner
Hiver à Sokcho
Elisa Shua Dusapin · 24 when first published
Novel · 139 pages
Translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins
AI-generated summary:One winter in Sokcho, a small port town near the North Korean border, a young French-Korean woman who has never been to Europe meets a comic-book artist from Normandy who has come looking for inspiration.
National Book Award 2021 · Finalist
Un verdor terrible
Benjamín Labatut · 40 when first published
Short stories · 192 pages · Historical
Translated by Adrian Nathan West
AI-generated summary:Linked narratives follow real scientists and mathematicians, among them Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Schrödinger and Heisenberg, through discoveries that transform the world and sometimes drive their makers to the edge of madness.
Also: International Booker 2021 shortlist
National Book Award 2021 · Finalist
人面桃花 · Renmian taohua
Ge Fei · 40 when first published
Novel · 392 pages · Historical, Coming of age · 江南三部曲, book 1
Translated by Canaan Morse
AI-generated summary:After her father walks out of the village of Puji and vanishes, young Xiumi grows restless among adults who keep their secrets from her, as her coming of age is swept up in the upheavals of her time.
National Book Award 2021 · Finalist
La dimensión desconocida
Nona Fernández · 45 when first published
Novel · 192 pages · Politics, Historical, Autofiction
Translated by Natasha Wimmer
AI-generated summary:During Chile's dictatorship, a secret police agent walks into the office of an opposition magazine and says he wants to talk; decades later a writer follows the threads of his testimony.
National Book Award 2021 · Finalist
المشّاءة · Al-Mashsha'a
Samar Yazbek · 47 when first published
Novel · War
Translated by Leri Price
AI-generated summary:A young woman who cannot stop walking and refuses to speak, tied by a rope to her mother's wrist, gives up words for drawings and colours as the world around her falls apart.
National Book Award 2020 · Winner
JR上野駅公園口 · JR Ueno-eki kōen-guchi
Yu Miri · 46 when first published
Novel · 168 pages
Translated by Morgan Giles
AI-generated summary:A man from Fukushima, who first stepped off the train at Ueno as a migrant labourer the year before the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, roams Ueno Park, a place where the living and the dead exist side by side.
National Book Award 2020 · Finalist
تفصيل ثانوي · Tafsil thanawi
Adania Shibli · 43 when first published
Novel · Historical, War, Politics
Translated by Elisabeth Jaquette
AI-generated summary:In August 1949 an Israeli army unit camps in the Negev desert; more than half a century later, a young Palestinian office worker sets out for the Negev to find out what happened at that camp.
National Book Award 2020 · Finalist
Wie hoch die Wasser steigen
Anja Kampmann · 35 when first published
Novel · 320 pages
Translated by Anne Posten
AI-generated summary:A worker on an offshore oil rig loses his only friend one stormy night, takes the dead man's belongings to his family in Hungary and then drifts north across Europe towards the Ruhr he once called home.
National Book Award 2020 · Finalist
Pappaklausulen
Jonas Hassen Khemiri · 40 when first published
Novel · 320 pages · Family
Translated by Alice Menzies
AI-generated summary:A father who walked out on his family years ago returns to Sweden for one of his visits, just as his son, worn down by parental leave and two small children, wants out of their unspoken arrangement.
National Book Award 2020 · Finalist
La perra
Pilar Quintana · 45 when first published
Novel · Family
Translated by Lisa Dillman
AI-generated summary:In a small village on Colombia's Pacific coast, a Black woman no longer young, who has spent years trying and failing to have a child with her partner, adopts a puppy.
National Book Award 2019 · Winner
Báró Wenckheim hazatér
László Krasznahorkai · 62 when first published
Novel · 576 pages · Satire
Translated by Ottilie Mulzet
AI-generated summary:A gravely ill baron with a gambling habit comes home from Buenos Aires to the run-down Hungarian provincial town where he was born, and where the locals await him like a messiah.
Also: Aegon 2017 winner · Libri 2017 shortlist
National Book Award 2019 · Finalist
الموت عمل شاق · Al-Mawt 'amal shaqq
Khaled Khalifa · 52 when first published
Novel · 192 pages · War, Family
Translated by Leri Price
AI-generated summary:Two brothers and a sister drive their father's body from Damascus to his home village through a Syria at war, to honour his wish to be buried there.
National Book Award 2019 · Finalist
Tiranan sydän
Pajtim Statovci · 26 when first published
Novel · 272 pages · Migration, Coming of age
Translated by David Hackston
AI-generated summary:In Tirana in the early 1990s, as communism in Albania collapses, young Bujar loses his father and his best friend Agim feels he lives in the wrong body; the two boys run for the coast, hoping to reach the West.
National Book Award 2019 · Finalist
La femme aux pieds nus
Scholastique Mukasonga · 52 when first published
Nonfiction · 152 pages · Family, War
Translated by Jordan Stump
AI-generated summary:A Rwandan writer remembers her mother, Stefania, who tried to shield her children from the everyday terror that Tutsi families lived under in the years before the 1994 genocide.
National Book Award 2019 · Finalist
密やかな結晶 · Hisoyaka na kesshō
Yoko Ogawa · 32 when first published
Novel · 411 pages · Speculative
Translated by Stephen Snyder
AI-generated summary:On an island where things vanish one by one, birds, perfume, soda pop, and people's hearts thin out with each loss, a novelist keeps writing while 'memory hunts' carry on the disappearances.
Also: International Booker 2020 shortlist
National Book Award 2018 · Winner
献灯使 · Kentōshi
Yoko Tawada · 54 when first published
Novel · 138 pages · Speculative
Translated by Margaret Mitsutani
AI-generated summary:In a Japan that has sealed itself off from the world after a great disaster, a man over a hundred years old, unable to die, looks after his frail great-grandson, a boy too weak to walk far.
National Book Award 2018 · Finalist
Scherzetto
Domenico Starnone · 73 when first published
Novel · 192 pages · Family
Translated by Jhumpa Lahiri
AI-generated summary:An elderly illustrator who settled in Milan long ago goes back to Naples to look after his small grandson, almost a stranger to him, for three days while the boy's parents are away.
National Book Award 2018 · Finalist
Kjærlighet
Hanne Ørstavik · 28 when first published
Novel · 174 pages · Family
Translated by Martin Aitken
AI-generated summary:The day before her son turns nine, a mother newly moved to a small town in the north of Norway heads for the library while the boy goes out alone into the winter evening to sell raffle tickets.
National Book Award 2018 · Finalist
Désorientale
Négar Djavadi · 47 when first published
Novel · 320 pages · Family, Migration, Politics
Translated by Tina Kover
AI-generated summary:In a Paris hospital waiting room, a woman born in Tehran, who has spent her life keeping her country and family at arm's length, is overtaken by three generations of family history.
Also: Warwick Prize 2019 shortlist
National Book Award 2018 · Finalist
Bieguni
Olga Tokarczuk · 45 when first published
Novel · 451 pages
Translated by Jennifer Croft
AI-generated summary:Fragments and stories about travel and travellers across places and centuries, from airports and hotels to the Moscow metro and a holiday in Croatia during which a man's wife and son vanish.
Also: International Booker 2018 winner · Warwick Prize 2018 shortlist · Nike 2008 winner