Back in November, we celebrated the nominations of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count and Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s The Creation of Half-Broken People for the 2026 Dublin Literary Award. We are thrilled to report that both novels have made the longlist!

Out of 69 nominated titles from 36 countries, only 20 made the cut, and our two African literary giants are among them. This is the validation these books deserve, and we are firmly in their corner as the competition heats up.

Adichie’s Dream Count came in as the most nominated title in the entire pool, championed by three libraries — Almeida Garrett Municipal Library in Portugal, Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt. That kind of cross-continental enthusiasm from the world’s librarians says everything. Meanwhile, Ndlovu’s The Creation of Half-Broken People, her audacious African Gothic that follows a nameless woman navigating the haunted legacies of colonialism and patriarchy, earned its place via nomination from the City of Cape Town Library, a fitting nod from the continent itself.

We’re rooting hard for both of them. The Dublin Literary Award is the world’s most valuable annual prize for a single work of fiction, worth €100,000 to the winner, and it would be nothing short of extraordinary to see an African writer take it home; whether Adichie’s Dream Count or Ndlovu’s quietly devastating novel. Either outcome would be a landmark moment for African literature on the global stage, and frankly, we think both books are more than capable of going all the way.

The full 2026 longlist includes 20 novels, with six works in translation. Other notable titles include Intermezzo by Sally Rooney, The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong, Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst, The Empusium by Nobel Laureate Olga Tokarczuk (tr. Antonia Lloyd-Jones), and There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak, among others. A shortlist of six will be announced on 7 April 2026, with the winner revealed at the International Literature Festival Dublin on 21 May 2026. Stay close. We’ll be watching.