The judges of the Wingate Literary Prize 2026 are delighted to announce their shortlist of six books that navigate the complex, overlapping identities Jews inhabit across borders, languages, and cultures.
The Einstein of Sex – Daniel Brook (WW Norton)
One of those books that makes you wonder about everything important you don’t know. Magnus Hirschfeld was a German-Jewish thinker in Weimar Berlin whose groundbreaking work on queerness and gender the Nazis attempted to destroy. Daniel Brook brings Hirschfeld and his insights vividly back to life.
Chopping Onions on my Heart – Samantha Ellis (Chatto & Windus)
Samantha Ellis connects with head and heart as she meditates on love, food and her vanishing mother tongue, Judeo-Iraqi-Arabic. A warm, witty and unusually kind book, each chapter somehow turns a vignette of a distinctive family culture into a universal reflection on identity and belonging.
City of Laughter – Temim Fruchter (Dialogue)
Temim Fruchter’s debut novel is a multilayered, miraculous piece of sophisticated storytelling, encompassing generations of Jewish history and folklore, the queer experience, desire and diaspora. From many threads she weaves a remarkable whole.
Berlin Atomized – Julia Kornberg (Astra House) We couldn’t stop thinking about this powerful debut which follows three Jewish siblings as they search for each other through the worn-torn cities of a disintegrating world. Julia Kornberg pulls off a tender and brutal vision as she writes about the bonds that endure when everything else falls apart.
Letters – Oliver Sacks, edited by Kate Edgar (Picador)
Oliver Sacks’ Letters is much more than a collection of correspondence. It is an insight into an extraordinary and unusual mind, a brilliant portrait of self-reflection and compassion. We all agreed that this is a book to keep by your bedside, to turn to over and again.
The Gates of Gaza – Amir Tibon (Scribe)
Since October 7, 2023 our shelves have been flooded with books that attempt to grapple with the conflict in the Middle East. Amir Tibon’s is a rare feat, a succinct and balanced narrative from one who was both witness and recorder. It has the pace of a thriller and the depth of history that will stand the test of time.
The judges commented:
‘We were delighted with the variety and balance of our shortlist. Here are hidden histories, from the Iraqi Jewish community revealed in Chopping Onions on my Heart to the Weimar-era revolution depicted in The Einstein of Sex. Berlin Atomized transports us to the far future; The Gates of Gaza takes on the terrible divisions of the past and the conflicts of the present. City of Laughter remakes the family saga in a brand-new light; and Oliver Sacks’ Letters offer insight into one remarkable man and the many worlds in which he lived. Fiction and non-fiction, there is huge range and richness here.’
Now in its 49th year, the annual prize, worth £4,000 is awarded to the best book, fiction or non-fiction, to convey the idea of Jewishness to the general reader.
This year’s judging panel is comprised of chair, Erica Wagner, Xiaolu Guo, Kate Weinberg and Rabbi Adam Zagoria-Moffet. The Wingate Prize and the Jewish Literary Foundation are pleased to be working in partnership again this year, supported by JW3.
The Jewish Literary Foundation will be hosting a celebration event. Author and Wingate Trustee, Emily Kasriel, will be joined by the Wingate Prize winner and this year’s judges to explore What’s Next for Jewish Books: A conversation with The Wingate Prize. 2pm on Sunday 8 March at Kings Place as part of Jewish Book Week.
Press information: Anna Pallai anna@ampliterary.co.uk / 07971 496 227
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NOTES TO EDITORS
Xiaolu Guo‘s novels include A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize). Her memoir Once Upon A Time In The East won the National Book Critics Circle Award 2017 and was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her nonfiction Radical was published by Vintage 2023, followed by My Battle of Hastings and she was named as a Granta’s Best of Young British Novelist in 2013.
Erica Wagner’s latest book is Mary and Mr Eliot: A Sort Of Love Story. She was the literary editor of the London Times for seventeen years and is a consulting editor on the comment pages of The Observer, contributing writer for the New Statesman and consulting literary editor for Harper’s Bazaar. She is the author of Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge, winner of the Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writer’s Award; her other books include Ariel’s Gift and Gravity.. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023.
Kate Weinberg‘s most recent novel There’s Nothing Wrong With Her was inspired by her battle with Long Covid during the pandemic. Her debut, The Truants, was published in 2020 and was a Book of the Year in The New York Times, The Observer, The Ipaper, The Irish Times and USA Today. After working as an English teacher in Rome, Kate took an MA in Creative Writing at UEA before returning to London to become a fiction and non-fiction editor and Creative Writing teacher.
Adam Zagoria-Moffet is the rabbi of St. Albans Masorti Synagogue (SAMS) and the Director of Strategy for Masorti Judaism in the UK. He was ordained from the Jewish Theological Seminary where he also received an MA in Jewish Thought. He grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and has lived in Minnesota, New York, and Israel before moving to the UK. His interests are primarily in mysticism, ethics, and Sephardic Judaism and culture. He also runs Izzun Books, a small independent publisher of unusual Jewish titles.
The Wingate Literary Prize was established in 1977 by the late Harold Hyam Wingate. The winner receives £4,000.
The Harold Hyam Wingate Charitable Foundation is a private grant-giving institution, established over forty years ago.
The Jewish Literary Foundation works to spread awareness, recognition and enjoyment of the best in ideas and great Jewish writing to as wide an audience as possible, including the annual Jewish Book Week festival, an emerging writers programme, a schools’ programme, a translation prize, year-round events and a free digital platform with 1,000 hours of video content.
JW3 is is the only Jewish Arts and Community Centre of its kind in the UK. The award-winning building hosts a café, cinema, theatre space, classrooms and rehearsal space.