RIYADH: Saudi writer Abdullah Nasser has been shortlisted for the 2026 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature for his novel “This Is Not a Bullet,” published by Al-Karma Publishers. He is among six writers selected for the prestigious regional literary prize. The six-title shortlist, announced by the American University in Cairo Press on Sunday, was selected from 143 submissions representing 23 countries across the Arab world and beyond. The award carries a cash prize of $5,000, as well as the translation and publication of the winning novel “throughout the English-speaking world,” according to the AUC Press, the first publisher to translate Mahfouz’s novels into English. The winner will be announced on Dec. 11, the anniversary of the Nobel laureate’s birth, whose literary legacy the medal commemorates. In “This Is Not a Bullet,” a childhood memory of his father firing a bullet draws a Saudi narrator back to an old court case, where his search for the truth forces him to confront “family secrets, guilt, and the lingering wounds of the past.” Born in 1981, Nasser has previously published two short-story collections, “The Art of Letting Go” and “Stuck on a Sunday.” The other five shortlisted novels span surrealism, displacement, resistance and historical fiction. Egyptian writer Ahmad Abdulatif’s “The Origin of the Species,” published by Hayat Publishing, offers a surreal vision of humanity’s final transformation, blurring the boundaries “between the living and the dead and between the human and the inhuman.” The novel “Longa-Cairo Nuweiba” by Egyptian writer Ganna Adel, published by Waziz Books, follows Asia as she leaves a troubled life in Cairo and travels through Sinai, “where new places, people, and experiences transform her in unexpected ways.” Iraqi novelist Inaam Kachachi’s “A Swiss Summer,” published by Al-Dar Al-Masriah Al-Lubnaniah, brings together four Iraqi refugees in Switzerland as they reckon with the memories, political divisions and competing ideologies carried with them from home. Palestinian writer Mohamed Jubaiti’s “No Mail to Gaza,” published by Dar Al-Adab, centers on a young gravedigger in Gaza who turns to parkour as an act of resistance, against a backdrop of “isolation, loss, love, and unfulfilled dreams.” Rounding out the shortlist is Egyptian writer Talal Faisal’s “An Old Egyptian Madness,” published by Diwan Publishing, a tale of “treachery, madness and intrigue” set amid the Mamluk court. The judging panel is chaired by Hoda Elsadda, professor of English and comparative literature at Cairo University and co-founder of the Women and Memory Forum.  The panel includes Sudanese novelist Hammour Ziada, the 2014 recipient of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal, alongside scholars, journalists and literary translators.