Kaplan's Plot by Jason Diamond (Flatiron Books) has won the $1,000 2026 Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) Jewish Fiction Award, honoring "works of fiction originally written in or translated into English with significant Jewish thematic content published in the U.S. in 2025."
The AJL commented: "A bracing and intellectually alive work of contemporary Jewish fiction, Kaplan's Plot announces Diamond as a novelist of uncommon precision and insight. The novel moves deftly between irony and earnestness, tracing a protagonist caught between the stories he has inherited and the one he is struggling to write for himself. With a voice at once restless and reflective, Diamond interrogates ambition, memory, and moral responsibility in a world where personal reinvention is never fully disentangled from communal history."
Three honor books were also recognized:
Sisters of Fortune by Esther Chehebar (Random House)
Fagin the Thief by Allison Epstein (Doubleday)
The Maiden and Her Monster by Maddie Martinez (Tor Books)