Born of a desire from staff to share in and engage with cultures in the territories where the bank operates, the contest is now in its eighth year and recognises works of fiction translated into English.
Both author and translator are equally celebrated for their efforts, reflecting the prize’s aim – to spread notable writing to as wide an audience as possible.
For 2025, an independent panel of judges led by critic and cultural journalist Maya Jaggi chose Sons, Daughters by Ivana Bodrožić, translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać as the winning work.
Ivana says she wanted to tell a story about how we’re all locked in ourselves – image by Ale Di Padova / EBRD
a feeling of being locked in
“It’s a novel I published in Croatia five years ago, so I was writing it maybe seven or eight years ago,” said Ivana.
“It started from me and my own feelings of being locked in and is written from three different perspectives.
“The first is a woman who has locked-in syndrome.
“She’s paralysed but she has a really strong inner life.
“The second voice is that of a young man.
“He is transgender and he doesn’t feel like he belongs to his body when he looks in the mirror.
“The third is the perspective of the mother of the first character.
“She is a woman in her 60s. She was born and raised in the patriarchy and she is deformed by that system, although she doesn’t even realise it.
“I wanted to tell a story about how we are all locked in ourselves – that we can live and move, but sometimes be paralysed.
“At the time I was writing it was difficult to be part of the LGBT minority in Croatia.
“It was when the Istanbul Convention was being ratified and there were some really loud parts of society – the right wing and the Catholic church.
“They wanted to point a finger at transgender people, saying that they were the biggest problem in Croatia and there were only one or two people who spoke out about their experience of living in that situation.
“In this radical metaphor through literature I was hoping that I could connect all those painful stories and make a novel that readers who wanted to be open could understand.”
EBRD Literatur Prize winners, Ivana and Ellen – image by Ale Di Padova / EBRD
winning the EBRD Literature Prize as an author
Ivana first found a love of reading as a child.
Growing up she spent five years in a refugee camp where “books were the only thing that told us there were other worlds, which was crucial for me”.
She said: “Books and stories became an essential part of my identity from an early age. Writing is connected with my life, not just talent but something I earned.
“I believe we can write about almost everything.
“What is important is our intention – what we want to do with our stories.
“Do we want to harm or humiliate someone, or do we want to make a larger space for understanding and freedom for human dignity?
“Sons, Daughters is not an easy book to read.
“All the stories are painful.
“My intention, when the reader closes the book, is to make them think that they have time to change something in their life, to open up a bit and see where their blind spots are.
“In that way, perhaps this novel is optimistic.
“It shows you that you don’t need to be so closed, so locked in your own world.
“Winning this prize gives you the feeling that you’re a real writer and you know what you’re doing.
“It’s wonderful to know there’s a community of readers and what you’re doing means something.
“Writing can be a lonely job and being translated is very rewarding. Croatia is a very tiny community.
“It means a lot to know that sometimes I may be able to cross language borders.”
Ellen says she began working as a translator while living in Croatia – image by Ale Di Padova / EBRD
translating the work
In this instance, the person tasked with shepherding Ivana’s words over the hurdles of understanding was translator Ellen Elias-Bursać – joint winner of the prize.
Born in the USA, it was studying Russian that sparked her professional journey.
“Our anti-Soviet professors wouldn’t send us to the USSR, but we were allowed to go to a Slavic country,” said Ellen.
“They found a programme in what was then Yugoslavia, and I went for a year.
“I met a guy, finished school, went back and got married in 1974 and lived there until 1990.
“I had my kids there and became a community translator for many years, getting involved in translating literature towards the end of my stay.
“I met Ivana through the publisher of her first novel, which was about the war in Croatia.”
The winners with the judges and fellow finalists at the presentation – image by Ale Di Padova / EBRD
winning the EBRD Literature Prize as a translator
Ellen said her process for translating a work began slowly before the pace picked up and she’d reach the end of a text.
Then a painstaking period of editing kicked in to ensure everything fitted together.
She said: “Different novels require different contextual explanations depending on how much reference there is to local culture.
“It’s about the sound of the language and the humour too.
“There’s always loss and always gain with translation, you just hope there’s more of the latter.
“It’s tremendously gratifying to win this prize.
“Our role is to support authors and we end up doing much more than translating.
“We work with publishers, attend book launches, find people to review and promote things.
“I’m really happy that Ivana’s novel, which deserves attention, is thankfully getting it.
“I’m also very pleased the EBRD continues to support voices from many parts of the world by promoting books and bringing them to people’s attention – that’s a really valuable gift for everyone.”
key details: EBRD Literature Prize
The EBRD Literature Prize is awarded annually, recognising both the author and translator of a work of fiction.
It celebrates creativity in the regions where the bank operates and aims to bring writing from a wide range of countries to a wider, global audience.
The other finalists recognised in 2025 were Ukraine’s Tanja Maljartschuk and translator Zenia Tompkins for Forgottenness, alongside Poland’s Olga Tokarczuk and translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones for The Empusium.
Sons, Daughters by Ivana Bodrožić, translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias- Bursać, is published by Seven Stories Press UK and is available through Waterstones in Cabot Place, priced £17.99.
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.
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.
A shortlist of 10 books has now been unveiled ahead of the announcement of the winner in June – image by Ale Di Padova/EBRD
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.
Maya Jaggi, chair of the judges for the 2025 prize – image by Jon Massey
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.”
The EBRD Literature Prize judging panel hard at work – image by Ale Di Padova/EBRD
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.”
Read on for Maya’s thoughts on the shortlisted works – image by Ale Di Padova/EBRD
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.”
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.
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.”
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
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.
