Egyptian writer Abdelrahman ElGendy and Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr have advanced to the finalist stage of the 2026 National Book Awards, weeks after they were joined by Togo-born Ghanaian writer Delali Adjoa on the awards’ longlist.
The three writers were among the African authors recognised when the National Book Foundation announced its 2026 longlists in September. The finalists were announced on October 6, with five writers or writing teams selected in each of the five award categories.
A finalist in the Nonfiction category for Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming, Abdelrahman ElGendy is an author and translator from Cairo, Egypt. A winner of the Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press, he holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, and his work appears in The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Nation, and Guernica. His poetry and prose translations from Arabic appear in Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Literary Hub, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. ElGendy’s work has received awards or fellowships from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the University of Pittsburgh, the de Groot Foundation, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Arab American National Museum.
ElGendy’s Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming, published by Hogarth, draws from the six years he spent in Egyptian prisons after his arrest as a teenage protester. The memoir traces his experience of political imprisonment alongside his father and the role writing played in helping him document his life in detention. While imprisoned, he completed a bachelor’s degree in engineering and began writing what would become his debut memoir.
Longlisted in the Translated Literature category, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s Pure Men, translated from French by Lara Vergnaud, is a finalist.
Born in Dakar in 1990, Sarr studied literature and philosophy at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His debut novel, Brotherhood, won the Grand Prix du Roman Métis, the Prix Ahmadou-Kourouma, and the French Voices Grand Prize, while he was later named a Chevalier of the National Order of Merit by the president of Senegal. His 2021 novel, The Most Secret Memory of Men, won the Goncourt Prize and was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature.
His novel, Pure Men, follows Ndéné, a French literature teacher in Dakar, who becomes drawn into the story of a man whose corpse is publicly removed from a grave after his death because he was believed to be a “góor-jigéen”, a derogatory term used for men who are perceived to live outside accepted social and sexual norms. As Ndéné investigates the circumstances surrounding the incident, he encounters a hidden side of Dakar and begins to question his own assumptions, beliefs, and place within the society around him.
The National Book Foundation announced the 2026 longlists across September 15, 16, and 17, with the Translated Literature longlist released on September 15. The Nonfiction and Young People’s Literature lists followed as part of the Foundation’s three-day longlist announcement. This announcement included the Africans longlisted for the award, among which included Delali Adjoa.
Longlisted in the Young People’s Literature category for The Free Verse Society, Delali Adjoa was born in Togo to Ghanaian parents and raised in Canada. She writes fiction centered on identity, freedom, and family, and loves the American South for the stories it has buried. She joined the 10 longlisted writers in the category announced in September.
Her book follows a tender hate-to-love YA romance about two teens who connect through their high school poetry club, where the power of the written word tears down the walls they’ve built around their hearts.
The National Book Awards are presented annually by the National Book Foundation across five categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature and Young People’s Literature. Now in their 77th year, the 2026 awards attracted 1,912 submissions, with 10 books longlisted in each category before five finalists were selected. The winners will be announced on November 18, with each winner receiving $10,000, while finalists receive $1,000.
The winners of the 2026 National Book Awards are scheduled to be announced on November 18 at the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner in New York.
Congratulations, Abdelrahman ElGendy, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, and Delali Adjoa.
