Ramallah: Palestinian author Ibrahim Nasrallah’s acclaimed novel ‘Time of White Horses’ has been selected as a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature-often referred to as the “American Nobel”-marking the only Arabic work among nine global contenders.
According to Oman News Agency, the winner of the biennial award, administered by the University of Oklahoma’s World Literature Today magazine, will be announced this October 2025 during a literary festival. Nasrallah’s novel, previously shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, traces Palestine’s history from late Ottoman rule through the 1948 Nakba via a fictional village that serves as both mirror and metaphor.
Blending documentary precision with literary imagination, the work re-examines collective memory through profound humanist lenses. No Arab writer has claimed the Neustadt since Algeria’s late novelist Assia Djebar in 1996. This year’s cohort includes Ukrainian novelist Yuri Andrukhovych, American authors Elif Batuman and Robert Olen Butler, Sudanese-American poet Safia Elhillo, French writer Mathias €š¬…¡¬‚¬¦¡¬‚¬Å¡¬¦¡¬‚¬Å¡¬€¦¡¬¦¡¬‚¬Å¡¬€¦¡¬€š¬¦¡¬¦¡¬°nard, Japanese author Yoko Tawada, and Pulitzer-winning American novelist Jesmyn Ward.
The selection underscores the novel’s resonance as both historical testimony and artistic achievement.