Announcing the shortlist for the 2025 Palestine Book Awards

We are delighted to unveil the shortlist for the 2025 Palestine Book Awards, celebrating outstanding literary and scholarly works that illuminate Palestinian history, culture, identity, and resilience. This year saw a record number of submissions—the most in the award’s history—reflecting the growing global engagement with Palestinian narratives.

In response to the exceptional quality and breadth of the works submitted, the judges have selected an extended shortlist of 11 books. This is the longest shortlist the Awards have ever presented, offering a richly varied mix of fiction, memoir, history, and media critique—each contributing powerfully to a deeper understanding of how Gaza and Palestine continue to shape the world.

The Shortlisted Titles (Alphabetical by First Name)

• The Afterlife of Palestinian Images
  by Azza El Hassan

• Producing Palestine: The Creative Production of Palestine Through Contemporary Media
  edited by Dina Matar and Helga Tawil-Souri

• Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture
  edited by Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller

• Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal
  by Mohammed El-Kurd

• My Palestine: An Impossible Exile
  by Mohammad Tarbush

• The Time Beneath the Concrete: Palestine Between Camp and Colony
  by Nasser Abourahme

• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
  by Omar El Akkad

• The World After Gaza
  by Pankaj Mishra
• Policy of Deceit: Britain and Palestine, 1914–1939
  by Peter Shambrook
• If I Must Die
  by Refaat Alareer
• The Hollow Half
  by Sarah Aziza
• No one knows their blood type
  by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, translated by Hazem Jamjoum
• Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings  
• edited by Louis Brehony & Tahrir Hamdi

Winners will be announced at our awards ceremony later this autumn. In the meantime, we encourage readers, academics, and cultural enthusiasts to explore this remarkable shortlist. These books challenge us, and deepen our understanding of Palestine’s past and present.

A heartfelt thanks to our judges and to all authors and publishers who submitted works for this prestigious honour.

READ: 2024 sees first children’s book honoured with a Palestine Book Award