We are delighted that Nuzha Nuseibeh has won an 2022 Giles St Aubyn Award for Namesake (Canongate, 2023), a “lively and learned” examination of her namesake, connecting modern ideas of Islam with myth-making, identity, religion and nationhood, feminism and race, early Muslim history and contemporary Britain.

Nuseibeh is a British-Palestinian doctoral student at Oxford University, born and raised in East Jerusalem. She has previously written for the Atlantic, and been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

“I am immensely honoured and so very grateful to have been awarded the RSL Giles St Aubyn Award – and, to be quite honest, completely stunned,” she said. “Writing a first book is a daunting and overwhelming process, and so it means the world to me to be recognised in this way, especially by such a prestigious institution.”

Read more about the prize and the other winners here.