Chair of the judging panel Maya Jaggi talks us through the initiative and details the shortlisted entries for countries the bank invests in
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Maya Jaggi has spent much of her career making space for international writers in the UK.
After studying PPE at Oxford and international relations at LSE, she began her journalistic career in current affairs.
“I was in my 20s and it was a fairly academic journal, but I started a literature section,” she said. “Whenever I was doing anything about international politics, I was always thinking about where the cultural aspects were.
“They always make everything so much richer – history, memory and imagination are the building blocks of fiction – and that’s something that gets left out.”
It was a niche she explored in greater depth through her extensive work at The Guardian, reviewing novels by overseas authors and interviewing a great many for the publication.
Apt then, that having spent so much of her career championing writing from around the world, that she should be chair of the judging panel for this year’s European Bank For Reconstruction And Development Literature Prize.
First, a bit of background.
what is this bank?
The EBRD is owned by some 77 shareholders – namely countries spread across 5 continents as well as the EU and the European Investment Bank.
Set up in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it supports primarily private sector enterprise in democratic states, helping foster the transition to open market systems in those territories.
While initially it was set up to support eastern European countries in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, its work has since broadened and spread to more than 30 nations over three continents, with €210 billion invested in more than 7,400 projects.
In 2022, it moved its headquarters to 5 Bank Street in Canary Wharf.
tell me more about the EBRD Literature Prize
The EBRD Literature Prize was first awarded in 2018 as an initiative aimed at engaging the bank’s staff in cultural activities relevant to its work.
Now in its eighth iteration, publishers are invited to submit works of fiction that have been translated into English from countries where the institution invests.
A panel of judges then goes through these, producing a shortlist before three finalists are revealed.
The overall winning author and translator split a prize of €20,000 equally between them, while the other two finalists split awards of €4,000.
For 2025, the prizes will be awarded on June 24 at EBRD’s Canary Wharf offices.
who decides?
The bank invites a panel of independent judges to pick both the shortlist and the finalists.
This year Maya has been joined by writer and editor Selma Dabbagh, translator and associate professor in Ukrainian and East European culture at UCL, Uilleam Blacker and writer and foreign correspondent for BBC News, Fergal Keane.
“I was invited to be a judge two years ago, so this is my third stint and, as chair, I get to suggest people to be on the panel, which has been a great pleasure,” said Maya.
“What I wanted were good readers, experienced readers and that’s what we have.
“There’s no long list and we don’t disclose how many submissions we’ve had for the prize, although they have been growing year-on-year and 2025 has been a bumper crop.
“All of the books go to each of the judges and we’ve been in contact with one another since December, discussing them.”
standing apart
“This is not a prize for literary translation, it’s a prize for the book,” said Maya.
“The author and translator are equally rewarded in recognition for their contribution to the work as published in English.
“As judges we’re looking for many things. You want to be surprised by something you haven’t read before and the wonderful thing about this prize is you find that in spades.
“During the judging, Fergal mentioned vigour, quality, originality and experimentation.
“This year there has been a lot of competition for those 10 shortlist slots.
“I’m always looking for originality and therefore how much you’ve read as a critic and a writer is relevant.
“The other thing is authorial voice – whether direct or indirect. Can you sense the presence of the author?”
a skilled rendering?
“It has to be a good book, but you’re also looking for a good translator,” said Maya.
“There’s the question of all the registers – how formal or informal the language is and how well the translators get that.
“Then there’s the whole question of slang or how dated the language is. Capturing all of that is a huge skill.
“As judges we have to consider whether a text has been flattened into uniform English. Does it capture the nuances?”
the EBRD Literature Prize, a showcase of innovation
“The nature of the prize and the countries where the Bank is investing means you find a lot of innovation,” said Maya.
“For example, where there’s a war, to capture the reality of things like bombs going off or a sense of being threatened, authors create new styles.
“In my experience, that extremis is something that comes out in new forms of writing.
“One of the books on the shortlist, My Women by Yuliia Iliukha, has been translated from the Ukranian by Hanna Leliv and it’s something the author calls flash fiction.
“It’s formal, it’s honed, but it’s, in some way, unfiltered – more raw, more emotional. It’s about anonymous women in war, and it’s very like poetry.
“Another thing that’s going on in central and eastern Europe is a reckoning with ultra-nationalism, and that’s something we noticed as a thread through some of the books.
“Celebration by Damir Karakaŝ, translated from the Croation by Ellen Elias-Bursać, is about the rise of the far right.
“It’s a subtly ironic title about the moment in 1941, when Croatia became independent for the first time in 1,000 years.
“That was the moment when, on the back of an alliance with the Nazis, it became a country – so it’s a very double-edged thing.
“There’s this thinking about history and memory.
“It’s 30 years since the end of the Yugoslav wars and the book is looking back to the Second World War, but that kind of nationalism rose again.
“It’s another very important thread.
“While judging we talked a lot about fact and fiction.
“What you get through literature rather than through news reports may be mundane human interaction but it’s just as interesting.”
looking forward
“The prize was set up to recognise the diversity of the cultures and languages in the places the bank operates,” said Maya.
“There’s still a competition for staff to review any book on the shortlist and we’ll be announcing the winner of that at the ceremony too.
“The EBRD isn’t just sponsoring this, it created it and it’s grown to be a prize in its own right.
“It’s important because you don’t want to think about people in mass metric or statistical terms.
“There’s nothing better than fiction for how people see themselves and their own realities – their problems, hopes and dreams.”
the shortlist
The key mission of the EBRD Literature Prize is to bring works from the countries the bank invests in to wider attention.
While the winner won’t be announced until June, we’ve reproduced the full shortlist here so Wharf Life readers can peruse those in line for the prize, get hold of books that take their fancy and make their own minds up.
As Maya says: “All of them are incredibly gripping reads.”
Sons, Daughters by Ivana Bodrožić
translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać, published by Seven Stories Press UK
>> “This book features a character who has locked-in syndrome and her partner who is trans,” said Maya.
“It brings up questions of sexuality and identity, with parallels between people who are locked in their own bodies in some way.
“We were completely bowled over by the language and a very unusual subject. One of the lines is: ‘Our body, our worst hell’.”
The Ukraine by Artem Chapeye
translated from the Ukrainian by Zenia Tompkins, published by Seven Stories Press UK
>> “It’s based on a lot of real events – one of the things that’s very strong is a love of country, but it’s not at all nationalistic,” said Maya.
“He’s looking warts and all through stories – some more journalistic than others – there’s a whole range.
“There’s a moment where there’s a family argument about Russian propaganda.
“One of the tactics of propaganda is to cast doubt on everything, so you can believe nothing and therefore also believe everything.
“This kind of book is a counter to that.”
Engagement by Çiler İlhan
translated from the Turkish by Kenneth Dakan, published by Istros Books
>> “This is based on fact, but a fictionalisation of an event,” said Maya.
“It’s set in south-east Turkey and tells of a blood-feud between two villages in 2011.
“It’s a massacre during an engagement party and the author is looking at what happened and why between Kurds and Turks.
“It’s about masculinity and women’s suffering.
“The whole novel covers just 16 hours, building up to this event.
“You learn about the repression of Kurdish culture and how Turkish is beaten into people in those parts.”
My Women by Yuliia Iliukha
translated from the Ukrainian by Hanna Leliv, published by 128 LIT
>> “This writing is very poetic, very punchy and raw and could apply to anyone,” said Maya.
“That’s something that’s accentuated by the anonymity of the women who go through their stories without being named.
“It’s looking at the experience of women in wartime and it’s very powerful.”
Life After Kafka by Magdaléna Platzová
translated from the Czech by Alex Zucker, published by Bellevue Literary Press
>> “This looks at Kafka’s real letters to ‘F’ but through the eyes of her descendants,” said Maya.
“It’s a sceptical look at the cult of Kafka from the point of view of the family of a woman who appears in his work and it looks at how women are seen in his work.
“It moves between fact and fiction, and there’s an article that tells you what’s real and what’s not.
“We were comfortable with that demarcation.”
Celebration by Damir Karakaš
translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać, published by Selkies House Limited
>> “This is partly about masculinity through the eyes of a man who was in the far-right militia, allied with the Nazis, and then re-emerged in the 1990s” said Maya.
“I believe this writer was a fighter himself. He has taken a look at how people were persuaded by nationalism.
“It’s also a beautifully written novel about the land, about farming, about the countryside.
“It’s an expression of love of country that is not nationalistic.”
Herscht 07769 by László Krasznahorkai
translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet, published by New Directions Publishing
>> “This is really immersive storytelling about a character similar to Lennie in Of Mice And Men,” said Maya.
“He’s a gentle giant who becomes used by the far-right in Germany.
“He’s obsessed by quantum physics and is convinced the world is ending.
The author is incredibly stylistic in what he does with language and people will be interested in how he depicts the far-right.”
László Krasznahorkai won the Man Booker Prize in 2015
The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk
translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones published by Fitzcarraldo Editions
>> “This book is set in a sanatorium or health resort in Poland,” said Maya. “It’s funny and grim, like a horror story. It’s also gothic and full of misogyny.
“There’s an afterword about where these ideas came from – a who’s who of western culture.”
Olga Tokarczuk is the winner of the Nobel Prize In Literature
Too Great A Sky by Liliana Corobca
translated from the Romanian by Monica Cure, published by Seven Stories Press UK
>> “This is fiction based on fact too, looking at something not very well known globally or even within Romania itself,” said Maya.
“It’s about the carving up of the country from the end of the First World War and the Sovietisation, and the deportation of many people, including women and children after the Second World War to Kazakhstan on trains, with terrible gruelling journeys.
“It’s also about syncretism between Catholicism and paganism.”
Forgottenness by Tanja Maljartschuk
translated from the Ukrainian by Zenia Tompkins, published by Bullaun Press (Ireland) / Liveright (USA)
>> “Maljartschuk looks at two characters separated by 100 years– now and and a century ago in Ukraine,” said Maya.
“It’s about memory and history, and the effort to obliterate history in that country.
“She writes in Ukrainian, talks about the Soviet era, the killing of history and the ban on memory.
“It’s a wonderful reactivation of the past, which becomes an act of resistance.”
key details: the EBRD Literature Prize
The winners of the EBRD Literature Prize are set to be announced at its Canary Wharf headquarters on June 24, 2025, with authors and translators in attendance.
Members of the public will be able to register to attend the reception and ceremony closer to the time.
Find out more about the prize here
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