Two AUC Press Novels Win Prestigious Translation Award

Honey Hunger and Granada: The Complete Trilogy, published by Hoopoe, the AUC Press literary imprint, have been honored by the 2025 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, with one novel named as the winner and the other as the front-runner.

The winner is Honey Hunger by Omani author Zahran Alqasmi (Hoopoe, 2025), translated by Marilyn Booth. Commenting on the award, AUC Press Executive Director Thomas Willshire said, “It is a privilege to have been the English-language publisher of Honey Hunger and we at the AUC Press are delighted that Marilyn Booth has been awarded this important prize. She has rendered Zahran Alqasmi’s eloquent novel into fluid, vivid English, reflecting the nuances of the author’s distinctive voice, a real feat of translation and truly deserving of this recognition.”

The front-runner is the historical epic Granda: The Complete Trilogy by the late Egyptian author Radwa Ashour, translated by Kay Heikkinen (Hoopoe, 2024). Nadine El-Hadi, senior acquisitions editor at AUC Press, commented, “We are thrilled that Kay Heikkinen's masterful translation of Radwa Ashour's epic Granada Trilogy—bringing all three volumes together to an English-reading audience for the first time—has been recognized by the Banipal prize: it is a testament to both her great skill as a translator and her commitment to this work. We at the AUC Press are proud to have been the publisher of this important book, in such an accomplished translation.”

Honey Hunger translator, Marilyn Booth, is professor emerita, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Magdalen College, University of Oxford. She previously held the Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud Professorship for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at Oxford University and is a recipient of the International Booker Prize. Her translation works for Hoopoe include Hassan Daoud’s No Road to Paradise (2017), Latifa Al-Zayyat’s The Open Door (2017), and Alia Mamdouh’s The Loved Ones (2008).

Granada translator, Kay Heikkinen, holds a PhD from Harvard University and previously served as Ibn Rushd Lecturer of Arabic at the University of Chicago. Her translations include Naguib Mahfouz’s In the Time of Love (AUC Press, 2010) and Radwa Ashour’s The Woman from Tantoura (Hoopoe, 2019) also written by Radwa Ashour. Heikkinen received the 2020 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for her translation of Velvet by Huzama Habayeb (Hoopoe, 2019).

In its twentieth year, the 2025 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation is administered by the UK’s Society of Authors, alongside several other literary translation prizes awarded annually, biennially, or every three years, recognizing outstanding translations into English.

The American University in Cairo Press (AUC Press) is the leading English-language academic publisher in the Middle East. Its fiction imprint, Hoopoe, focuses on bringing powerful literary works from the Middle East to readers worldwide. Since its launch in 2016, Hoopoe has published numerous award-winning novels, including No Knives in the Kitchens of This City by Khaled Khalifeh (translated by Leri Price), In The Spiders’s Room by Muhammad Abdelnabi (translated by Jonathan Wright), The Men Who Swallowed the Sun by Hamdi Abu Golayyel (translated by Humphrey Davies) and most recently Empty Cages by Fatma Qandil (translated by Adam Talib).