Overview
- The Sudanese-Scottish author was declared the 2025 PEN Pinter Prize winner at English PEN’s summer party in London.
- Judges commended her fiction for its intellectual rigor and compassionate insight into migration, faith and the inner lives of Muslim women.
- Aboulela’s six novels and two short story collections, most recently River Spirit, are celebrated for their nuanced exploration of identity and belonging.
- She is an Honorary Professor at the University of Aberdeen and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
- Her selection continues a PEN Pinter tradition of honoring writers whose uncensored storytelling confronts social and political injustices.