Srinagar, June 21 -- It's not often a novel written in Kashmiri reaches the global stage. But on June 16, that changed.

In a groundbreaking announcement at Himal Southasian's annual Fiction Fest,To Each Their Own Hell, a 1975 novel by Akhtar Mohiuddin, translated into English by Mehdi Khawaja, was named the winner of the 2025 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation.

The prize, only in its third year, honours translations that bring lesser-heard voices from South Asia to English-speaking readers.

This is the first time it has gone to a work written in Kashmiri, and, likely, the first time a Kashmiri novel will be published in English in the United States.

For a language as rich in literature as Kashmiri, and as hi...