Renowned Sudanese-Scottish author Leila Aboulela has been awarded the prestigious PEN Pinter Prize 2025 for her deeply moving and courageous writing that gives voice to migration, Islamic spirituality, and the inner lives of Muslim women, reported the Guardian.
The award was announced by English PEN during its Summer Party at the October Gallery in London on Wednesday. The celebration featured live readings of Aboulela’s work by actors Khalid Abdalla and Amira Ghazalla, marking a proud moment for literature that reflects complex identities and underrepresented voices.
Aboulela, surprised and humbled by the honour, said she was “deeply grateful” to English PEN and the judging panel. “For someone like me, a Muslim Sudanese immigrant who writes from a religious perspective probing the limits of secular tolerance, this recognition feels truly significant,” she said.
The author added that the award expands the meaning of freedom of expression and whose narratives deserve to be heard in global literature.
The judging panel included Ruth Borthwick (Chair of English PEN), poet Mona Arshi, and novelist Nadifa Mohamed. Borthwick praised Aboulela’s writing as “extraordinary in its range and sensibility,” highlighting how her stories reshape understanding and give a platform to often unheard voices.
Mona Arshi lauded Aboulela for “storifying the interior lives of women who are often ignored or silenced,” commending her subtle and brave storytelling on faith, displacement, and resilience. Nadifa Mohamed emphasized Aboulela’s commitment to making Muslim women central to her narratives, calling her writing “a balm, a shelter, and an inspiration,” especially in today’s world marked by conflict in regions like Sudan and Gaza.
Leila Aboulela was born in Cairo in 1964 to a Sudanese father and Egyptian mother, raised in Khartoum, and later moved to the UK, where she began her literary career in 1992 while working as a lecturer. She holds advanced degrees in Statistics from the London School of Economics and is now an Honorary Professor at the University of Aberdeen.
She is the author of six acclaimed novels including The Translator, Minaret, Lyrics Alley, Bird Summons, The Kindness of Enemies, and her latest, River Spirit. Her short story collection Elsewhere, Home won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award. Her work has been translated into 15 languages, and her radio plays have aired on BBC Radio.
Aboulela was the first-ever winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing and has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction three times.
The PEN Pinter Prize, established in memory of Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, is awarded annually to a writer from the UK, Ireland, or the Commonwealth whose work demonstrates a “fierce intellectual determination to define the real truth of our lives and our societies.”
As per tradition, the prize will be shared with a “Writer of Courage” — an individual who has faced risk for defending freedom of expression. Aboulela will select the co-winner, to be announced at the award ceremony at the British Library on October 10, 2025.
Last year’s winner was Arundhati Roy, who named British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, imprisoned in Egypt, as her Writer of Courage.
