Moroccan-American novelist Laila Lalami has been shortlisted for the 2026 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction Book of the Year, the United Kingdom’s leading prize for science fiction, for her novel The Dream Hotel.
The Arthur C. Clarke Award is given annually for the best science fiction novel first published in the United Kingdom during the previous year, and was founded in 1987 with a grant from Sir Arthur C. Clarke. This year marks the award’s 40th anniversary. The judges received a record 132 books from 52 eligible UK publishing imprints and independent authors.
The Dream Hotel, published in the UK by Bloomsbury Circus, centres on Sara Hussein, a Moroccan American woman who, upon returning from a trip to the United Kingdom, is detained by a government agency tasked with assessing citizens’ likelihood of committing crimes. What begins as a temporary holding arrangement stretches on through bureaucratic delay and deliberate mismanagement.
Born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1968, Lalami earned a licence ès lettres degree in Morocco before receiving a fellowship to study in the United Kingdom, where she completed a master’s degree in linguistics. She moved to the United States in 1992 to pursue a PhD, intending to return home once she finished her studies.
Her debut, a linked story collection titled Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, was published in 2005. Her 2014 novel The Moor’s Account, about the historical figure Estevanico, won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her most recent novel before The Dream Hotel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award in Fiction.
Beyond fiction, Lalami’s essays and criticism have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, Harper’s, the Guardian, and the New York Times, and she has received fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Past winners of the Arthur C. Clarke Award include Lauren Beukes, Tade Thompson, and Namwali Serpell, while past shortlistees have included Nnedi Okorafor in 2016 and Patience Agbabi in 2021.
The winner will be announced on August 12, 2026.
Congratulations, Laila Lalami!
