Dutch-Afghan author Forugh Karimi has been awarded the 2026 Nederlandse Boekhandelsprijs (Dutch Booksellers Prize) for her 2025 novel In My Eyes I Carry Clouds (In mijn ogen draag ik wolken), originally written in Dutch and published by Nelleke Geel at Meridiaan Uitgevers. Rights worldwide are represented by Pontas and Korean rights were pre-empted by Marco Polo Press. All other translation and audiovisual rights are currently available.
The jury report, compiled from the Dutch booksellers who voted for this novel, says:
Forugh Karimi has written a beautiful and moving novel about living between two worlds. Through the protagonist, Widá, who fled Kabul for the Netherlands as a teenager, she shows how war creeps into life and what it's like to be forced to flee your country. Karimi skillfully weaves her knowledge of psychology and psychiatry into this narrative, succeeding in making the trauma of fleeing your homeland intensely tangible.
Karimi is a gifted storyteller: her writing style is not only literary strong but also captivates the reader and doesn't let go. It's undeniable how personal the novel is. Reading it feels like looking straight into the author's heart, making Widá's story even more poignant.
"In My Eyes I Wear Clouds" is urgent, moving, and heartbreaking. Karimi addresses an important current issue and thus gives refugees a voice. For a better world, as many people as possible should read Karimi.
Forugh Karimi is an author and psychiatrist who fled the war in Afghanistan and arrived in the Netherlands at age 25. In 2022, Karimi made her debut with the novel The Mothers of Mahipar — which won the Hebban Debut Prize — followed in 2023 by the novella Nargis, both published by Meridiaan Uitgevers. With her second novel, In My Eyes I Carry Clouds (In mijn ogen draag ik wolken) she once again demonstrates her unique contribution to the Dutch literary landscape. In the picture below, the author with her editor, Nelleke Geel:
Karimi offers a new and necessary voice from within Afghanistan with this work of literary fiction exploring trauma, loss, silence, and the price of survival, which is intimate, morally complex, and based on a heartbreaking true story. Over four years ago, when Afghanistan was handed back to the Taliban, a close friend of the author’s was captured and murdered, and there was nothing she could do to avoid it. In the novel, it is the protagonist, Widá, who carries immense grief from a past she has tried so hard to forget. She will embark on a road trip to Athens to fulfill an old promise and try to heal from a history that had been silenced within herself.
International editors can apply for translation grants from the Dutch Foundation for Literature. The grants can reimburse up to 70% of the translation costs.
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