The African literary world is currently in celebration as Sudanese author Leila Aboulela receives the 2025 PEN Pinter Prize, one of the most sought after prizes.
The announcement was made at English PEN’s summer party, where actors Khalid Abdalla and Amira Ghazalla brought Aboulela’s words to life with powerful readings from her work.
Aboulela will officially receive the award on October 10 at the British Library in London. At this ceremony, she will also reveal her choice for the PEN Pinter Writer of Courage award, an honour reserved for an author “active in defence of freedom of expression, often at great risk to their own safety and liberty.”
In a moving statement, Aboulela reflected on the significance of this recognition.
This year’s judges include Ruth Borthwick (British arts administrator and literature executive), Mona Arshi FRSL (award-winning British poet and novelist), and Nadifa Mohamed FRSL (Somali-British novelist). Mohamed praised Aboulela’s work for its “commitment” to the “lives and decisions of Muslim women,” how she centers both their “struggles and pleasures with dignity.” She also noted the timeliness of such a work: “In a world seemingly on fire, and with immense suffering unmarked and little mourned in Sudan, Gaza, and beyond, her writing is a balm, a shelter, and an inspiration.”
Aboulela is a prominent voice in the global literary space for her celebration and examination of the lives of Muslim women. Her writing has been translated into 15 languages. She has published 11 books, with River Spirit, Lyrics Alley, and Translator gaining high critical acclaim. She is also know for being the inaugural winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing when it was launched in 2000, an award that would go on to define 21st century African fiction.
Aboulela was born in 1964 in Cairo, to an Egyptian mother and a Sudanese father. She moved to Sudan at the age of six weeks and lived in Khartoum continuously until 1987. Leila learnt English at the Khartoum American School and at the Sisters’ School, a private Catholic High school. She graduated with a degree in Economics from the University of Khartoum specializing in Statistics. She then travelled to Britain where she was awarded a M.Sc. and an MPhil in Statistics from the London School of Economics. In 1990 Leila moved to Scotland with her husband and children. She started writing in 1992 while working as a lecturer in Aberdeen College and later as a Research Assistant in Aberdeen University. From 2000, Leila and her family lived in Jakarta, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha before moving back, in 2012, to Aberdeen
The PEN Pinter Prize, established in 2009, honors writers of outstanding literary merit who, in the spirit of Harold Pinter, cast an “unflinching, unswerving gaze upon the world” and display a “fierce intellectual determination to define the real truth of our lives and our societies.” Their work draws public attention to literature that engages with contemporary realities and injustices.
Past African recipients include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2018) and Tsitsi Dangaremgba (2021).