Kay Heikkinen has been named runner-up for the 2025 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, receiving £1,000 for her rendering of Radwa Ashour’s Granada: The Complete Trilogy. This marks the first year the prize has designated a runner-up alongside winner Marilyn Booth. The award will be presented at the Society of Authors ceremony on February 10, 2026.

The Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize stands as the first award worldwide dedicated exclusively to published translations from Arabic to English. Established by Banipal magazine and the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature, the prize honors translators who bring full-length works of Arabic literary merit to English-speaking audiences. Wholly sponsored by the Saif Ghobash family in memory of their father—a passionate advocate for Arabic and world literatures—the prize has recognized translators since its inaugural award in 2006.

Heikkinen’s translation brings Ashour’s complete trilogy into English for the first time, chronicling the destruction of Moorish Spain following Granada’s conquest by Catholic monarchs in 1492. The work narrates the Muslims who remained in Andalusia, their struggle to maintain faith and identity, and their ultimately unsuccessful resistance against cultural erasure. Judges praised it as “a stunning rendition of a masterful work of Arabic literature” and “a magnificent tapestry, a throng of voices, bringing to life the violent dismantling of Al Andalus.”

The trilogy won first prize for best book by an Arab woman writer when published in Arabic, with its opening volume claiming Book of the Year at the 1994 Cairo International Book Fair. Radwa Ashour (1946-2014) authored more than fifteen works of fiction, memoir, and criticism, earning both the Constantine Cavafy Prize for Literature and the prestigious Owais Prize for Fiction. Her scholarship and creative work established her as one of Egypt’s most acclaimed writers.

Heikkinen, who holds a PhD from Harvard University and previously served as Ibn Rushd Lecturer of Arabic at the University of Chicago, won the 2020 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for her translation of Huzama Habayeb’s Velvet. Her translation of Habayeb’s Before the Queen Falls Asleep was shortlisted for the 2024 prize. She has also translated Naguib Mahfouz’s In the Time of Love and Ashour’s The Woman from Tantoura.

Granada: The Complete Trilogy is available at AUC Press and major bookstores worldwide.