By Raza Syed
LONDON, June 26 – Croatian author Ivana Bodrožić’s novel Sons, Daughters has won the 2025 EBRD Literature Prize. The award, presented at a ceremony in London, recognizes the novel’s masterful exploration of trauma through three interconnected narratives. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development honoured Bodrožić and translator Ellen Elias-Bursać for the English-language edition published by Seven Stories Press UK.
The winning work, published in English for the first time last year, was selected by an independent judging panel chaired by writer, critic, and cultural journalist Maya Jaggi. The panel included Uilleam Blacker (Associate Professor in Ukrainian and East European Culture at University College London and literary translator); writer and editor Selma Dabbagh; and BBC News foreign correspondent and author Fergal Keane.
Presided over by jury chair Maya Jaggi, the independent panel praised the novel’s “invigorating candor” in voicing perspectives of a woman with locked-in syndrome, her body-alienated partner, and a mother psychologically shackled by her past. Jaggi likened the work to “Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly meeting Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,” emphasizing its power to reveal “how war and trauma infect the present.”
Bodrožić expressed profound gratitude during her acceptance: “When you reach the finals, hope flickers – but standing among these beautiful writers overwhelms me. Literature connects us through identification; we recognize our shared humanity more than we acknowledge.” Translator Elias-Bursać, whose “supple translation” drew special commendation, reflected: “This astonishing win proves translation transcends cultural boundaries. These character-driven novels offer vital counterpoints to contemporary auto-fiction.”
EBRD Secretary General Kazuhiko Koguchi also presented awards to the two other shortlisted finalists: Ukrainian author Tanja Maljartschuk’s Forgottenness (translated by Zenia Tompkins, published by Bullaun Press/Liveright) and Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s The Empusium (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Fitzcarraldo Editions). Per EBRD guidelines, Bodrožić and Elias-Bursać each receive €10,000, while the authors and translators of the two finalist works each receive €2,000.
Image Credit:Brussels Independent
Now in its eighth year since first being awarded in 2018, the EBRD Prize spotlights literature from Albania to Uzbekistan. To date, 76 authors and their translators have been featured on its shortlists. The prize exclusively recognises translated works, amplifying voices from the bank’s investment regions.
Image Credit:Brussels Independent
As Bodrožić concluded: “When a Croatian story resonates in London, literature proves itself our last universal language.”
