Winner Mehdi Khawaja, Kashmiri translator of the work, is a freelance journalist and editor who has written for various Indian and international publications. He has also taught courses on Kashmiri language and literature at Ashoka University and is a traditional craftsman.

Khawaja is one among a diverse pool of finalists. Selected from a rich and eclectic array of entries, this year’s shortlisted translators are especially vigorous. Their narratives, set both in South Asia and parts of Western Europe, reflect the increasingly hybrid, conflicted and multifarious ideas that haunt and inform much of South Asian-inspired literature in languages both from the region and beyond. The work is also especially global and varies in style and construction. The translators in this year’s pool demonstrate, through their industry, how contradictory the forces they navigate can be, from one day to the next. Some occupy fraught political spaces or inhabit isolated, narrow worlds. Each entry on this year’s shortlist also lives vitally in conversation with other literary traditions. The Armory Square award is presented annually and aims to cultivate a new generation of literary translators working with South Asian languages.

Five entries were selected as finalists this year to recognize the breadth, linguistic complexity and robust modern literature of South Asia. As part of that mission, the jury recognized a second entry, Saigon Puducherry, translated from Tamil by Subhashree Beeman, as noteworthy, and selected it for a Special Jury Mention. Sponsored by Armory Square Ventures, the groundbreaking translation prize is the first of its kind worldwide.

The winner was announced on June 16, 2025, during an event co-hosted with Himal Southasian’s annual Fiction Fest. The livestreamed panel discussion featured readings from the five finalists, remarks from jury chair Jason Grunebaum and Armory Square Ventures Cofounder Pia Sawhney, and the live announcement of the 2025 prize winner.

Last year’s winning entry, Fortress of the Forgotten Ones, translated from the Urdu by Sana Chaudhry, and written by Pakistani author, Fahmida Riaz, will soon be available for purchase from Open Letter Books. Follow that title here on the publisher’s website.

Launched in July of 2022, the Armory Square Prize is an effort to remedy the stark disparities in literary translation worldwide and support compelling storytellers from the Indian Subcontinent by raising their visibility in the US. Of the nearly 7,600 books published in translation in the United States over the past decade, only 64, or fewer than 1%, originated from a South Asian language, even though these languages are spoken by a full one-fifth of the world’s population.

This year’s finalists, in alphabetical order by title, are:

1. Badalta Hua Desh by Manoj Kumar Pandey (Hindi);
Translated by Punarvasu Joshi (Short story collection, 2020)

2. Grandmothers, Granddaughters and Other Women by Kumudu Kumarasinghe (Sinhala);
Translated by Ciara Mendis (Short story collection, 2024)

3. Moumin (or The Believer and Other Stories) by Shobasakthi (Tamil);
Translated by Sumathy Sivamohan (Collected stories, 1997-2024)

4. WINNER: To Each Their Own Hell by Akhtar Mohiuddin (Kashmiri);
Translated by Mehdi Khawaja (Novel, 1975)

5. SPECIAL JURY MENTION: Saigon Puducherry by Nagarathinam Krishna (Tamil),
Translated by Subhashree Beeman (Novel, 2022)

Excerpts of all five shortlisted works will be published by Words Without Borders, an online literary publication dedicated to works in translation with global reach. The winning book will be published by Open Letter Books in 2027.

The jury brings together award-winning specialists in South Asian and non-South Asian literary translation. This year, the jury included Deena Chalabi, V.V. (Sugi) Ganeshananthan, Jason Grunebaum (jury chair), Daisy Rockwell, Pia Sawhney, Arunava Sinha, and Padma Viswanathan.

As part of its deliberations, the jury considered factors such as the quality of the translation, the significance of the original work, and the degree of underrepresentation of the language in the US publishing market.

About Armory Square Ventures in Skaneateles, New York

Armory Square Ventures (ASV) is a mission-focused technology venture capital firm that strives to be a community catalyst in the regions where we operate. The firm aims to identify innovators today that will lead us toward a brighter, more humane tomorrow. As such, ASV is an optimism engine for ecosystems outside of Silicon Valley, supporting B2B, AI and tech-enabled software startups to source talent, resources and capital. Our focus lies in places overlooked by other investors. For more about the prize or finalists, contact Shreyas Shende at shreyas@armorysv.com

About Open Letter Books in Rochester, New York

Open Letter—the University of Rochester's nonprofit, literary translation press—is one of only a handful of publishing houses dedicated to increasing access to world literature for English readers. Publishing ten titles in translation each year and running an online literary website called Three Percent, Open Letter searches for works that are extraordinary and influential, works that we hope will become the classics of tomorrow.