The Palestinian novelist, short story writer, and journalist Ibtisam Azem, is among the 13 writers on the 2025 International Booker Prize longlist.
Her novel asks difficult and provocative questions. What if all the Palestinians in Israel simply disappeared one day? What would happen next? How would Israelis react? These unsettling questions are posed in Ibtisam Azem’s powerfully imaginative novel.
Born and raised in Taybeh, near Jaffa, the city from which her mother and maternal grandparents were internally displaced in 1948, Azem lived in Jerusalem and studied at the Hebrew University before moving to Germany and later to the US.
She has published two novels in Arabic: The Sleep Thief (2011) and The Book of Disappearance (2014) and a short story collection, I Wish I Were a Hoopoe (2024). The Book of Disappearance has been translated into English, Italian, and German.
Azem’s short stories and essays have appeared in several anthologies and various magazines, including Evergreen Review, Journal of Palestine Studies, World Literature Today, and Jadaliyya.
The full International Booker Prize 2025 longlist is as follows:
- The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem (Palestine), translated by Sinan Antoon (And Other Stories)
- On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle (Danish), translated by Barbara J Haveland, Scottish (Faber)
- There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem (French), translated by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert (Bullaun Press)
- Solenoid (Romanian) by Mircea Cărtărescu (Romanian), translated by Sean Cotter (Pushkin Press)
- Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda (Mexican), translated by Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary (Scribe UK)
- Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix (French), translated by Helen Stevenson (Small Axes)
- Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa (Japanese), translated by Polly Barton (Viking)
- Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami (Japanese), translated by Asa Yoneda (Granta Books)
- Eurotrash by Christian Kracht (Swiss), translated by Daniel Bowles, American (Serpent’s Tail)
- Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico (Italian), translated by Sophie Hughes, British (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
- Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq (Kannada), translated by Deepa Bhasthi (And Other Stories)
- On a Woman’s Madness by Astrid Roemer (Dutch), translated by Lucy Scott (Tilted Axis Press)
- A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre (French), translated by Mark Hutchinson (Lolli Editions)
Max Porter, International Booker Prize 2025 chair of judges, said: “Translated fiction is not an elite or rarefied cultural space requiring expert knowledge; it is the exact opposite. It is stories of every conceivable kind from everywhere, for everyone. It is a miraculous way in which we might meet one another in all our strangeness and sameness, and defy the borders erected between us.
“As we searched for our longlist among the 154 books submitted, we marvelled at what the world was thinking. How are people making sense of these times using the novel as a vehicle for thought and feeling? And how are translators taking these books and – in English – making them sing or scream? The books on our unconventional longlist provide a wildly energising and surprising range of answers. We hope they will exhilarate and engage a worldwide community of readers.”
The winning title will be awarded a prize of £50,000, to be divided equally between the author and translator. The announcement will be made on 20 May.
