Translated books win both James Tait Black Prizes for the first time
Lucas Rijneveld's My Heavenly Favourite and Lamia Ziadé's My Great Arab Melancholy won the 2025 James Tait Black Prizes, shared with their translators.
The University of Edinburgh announced the 2025 James Tait Black Prizes on 30 May 2025. The fiction prize went to My Heavenly Favourite by Lucas Rijneveld, translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison (Faber). The biography prize went to My Great Arab Melancholy by Lamia Ziadé, translated by Emma Ramadan (Pluto Press).
It is the first time both prizes have been won by translated books, and only the second time in the awards' history that a writer and translator have shared a prize. Each prize is worth £10,000. The awards have been open to translations since 2021.
Presented since 1919, the James Tait Black Prizes are the UK's longest-running literary awards and the only major British book prizes judged by literature scholars and students.
Why it matters: sharing the prize with the translator treats translation as part of the authorship of a book, not a service performed on it. That remains unusual among British prizes, and the decision gives some weight to the argument that translators deserve both credit and a share of the money.
Source: University of Edinburgh: Translated works win UK's oldest book awards.