We are thrilled to announce the finalists chosen for this year’s Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing in fiction. In this ninth year of the prize, it has never felt more important to highlight themes of migration, displacement, unrest, alienation, self-determination—of seeking home, and all the reasons one leaves home to find a better way.
As it has since the beginning in 2015, the prize aims to support writers whose work examines, with fresh urgency, how immigration shapes our countries, our communities, and ourselves. The winner will receive $10,000 and publication by Restless Books.This year’s judges—authors Priyanka Champaneri, Rivka Galchen, and Ilan Stavans—have selected the following four finalists. Please join us in celebrating their work.
Every Other Universe by Annesha Mitha
A mother plans to name her daughter Mrittika, which means soil, earth—until she learns of a woman with the same name who died by suicide. This glimpse into what-if is the basis of linked stories that form a striking, kaleidoscopic, ever-shifting portrait of mother and daughter, deeply connected to and affected by place. Who is Mrittika? Is she the lost or the found? Who is her mother—the one who never immigrated, who stayed in Kolkata; or the one who chose differently and left? How does the possibility of the daughter affect the possibility of the mother? How many possibilities can one woman, one family, one city, one planet hold?
Read the excerpt featured in The Common.
A Bunch of Savages by Sofi Stambo
The characters in this story collection have come from all over the world to New York City, where they dance and laugh their way out of difficult situations and into even messier ones, struggling to play parts that fate seems to assign them at random. They run in and out of diners, offices, and painter’s workshops, gesticulating to explain themselves, never knowing the right words—or if they do, voicing them in a way only other immigrants can understand. Their nostalgia transforms the big city into their little Italy or little Odessa or little Sofia. Marginal and mute, they try to inhabit it quietly. With pathos and humor, scenes from the narrator’s former life in Bulgaria weave into the mix like dreams.
Read the excerpt featured in The Common.
Lagos Will Be Hard for You by Ayotola Tehingbola
In this collection of stories, a mother pawns her daughter to save her. A grieving son must bury his Muslim father in twenty-four hours in the thick of winter. A doctor battles to save her partner from himself. A young businesswoman seeks a spiritual experience. A dominatrix yearns to give life to her sexual kinks in a repressive household. The weight of the word “slave” is put to the test in conservative Idaho. A boy escapes his bipolar mother. Two men kidnap a White man to fight the infiltration of oil companies in Southern Nigeria. These vivid yet disparate stories ask the reader to stand with each character at the crossroads of desire, ambition, and tradition, seeking autonomy amid the uncontrollable tides that mold their lives.
Read the excerpt featured in The Common.
Cattail by Haitao Xu
Cattail is an eleven-year-old girl from a poverty-stricken region of China who longs to be the first person in her village to go to college. Growing up during the Cultural Revolution with a congenital disability is hard enough, so when Cattail’s baby sister arrives, their mother vows to look after the baby herself so Cattail can stay in school—but life has other plans. Cattail, who was born in the Year of the Tiger and named after one of the toughest plants, decides to fight. This humbly ambitious middle grade novel offers young people a compelling glimpse into a historical period in China while also exploring universal themes of bullying, disability, friendship, family, education, and perseverance.
Read the excerpt featured in The Common.
The winner will be announced on November 11, 2024.
For more information about the prize or the featured finalists, please don't hesitate to contact us—we love to hear from you!
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