Oneworld Publications was founded in 1986 by Novin Doostdar and Juliet Mabey, who had met as students in the 1970s and subsequently married;[2][4] the company's name reflects their international approach to publishing with global values, initially producing non-fiction "with a focus on bold, intelligent non-fiction across the humanities".
[5][6] In 2009, Oneworld launched a literary fiction list to focus on publishing inspiring, intelligent and thought-provoking novels from around the world.
[7][8][9][10] In 2023, Paul Lynch became the third Oneworld author to win the Booker Prize with his novel Prophet Song.
[15] Reasons She Goes to the Woods by Deborah Kay Davies was longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction in 2014, as well as being shortlisted for the Encore Award in 2015.
On the crime side, Lola by Melissa Scrivner Love won the Crime Writers' Association John Creasey New Blood Dagger in 2018 and in 2019, Syd Moore was shortlisted for the CWA Short Story Dagger with her story "Death Becomes Her", from the short-story collection The Twelve Strange Days of Christmas.
Also in 2019, Will Dean's Red Snow, the second novel in his Tuva Moodyson Mystery series, won the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Readers' Independent Voice Award.
In 2022 Oneworld published White Torture a non-fiction book by Narges Mohammadi who was named the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023.