She Who Remains

Shortlisted for The International Booker Prize 2026

She Who Remains,Rene Karabash’s landmark Bulgarian queer novel, secrets readers into a rural Albanian village where, to this day, the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini―a collection of archaic laws―looms over the lives of villagers with the same haunting presence of the surrounding mountains. Bekija, painfully aware of why she cannot have what she most wants, chooses to become a “sworn virgin,” setting off a bloody and heartbreaking chain of events that shatters a family and destroys a cherished relationship, but also reveals how trauma can lead to vital, if uncomfortable, truths. Karabash’s poetic stream of consciousness traces gender evolution with innovative grace. 

This bold exploration of what it means to be a woman in a world defined by the violence of ancient patriarchal traditions has resonated with readers across Europe and beyond, and now English-language readers won’t soon forget Izidora Angel’s award-winning translation.

Izidora Angel is a Bulgarian-born memoirist, essayist, and literary translator based in Chicago. She is the author of four full-length translations from Bulgarian, including Yordanka Beleva’s Keder, for which she received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Angel’s work has appeared in A Public Space, Astra, Best Literary Translations 2024, Chicago Reader, Electric Literature, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. She received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant and the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation for her in-progress work on She Who Remains.

Bulgarian poet, writer, screenwriter, actor, and playwright Rene Karabash has won multiple awards for her work, including several Best Actress awards for her role in the film Godless, and the Elias Canetti prize—Bulgaria’s most prestigious literary award—for She Who Remains, her debut novel. She Who Remains has been translated into over a dozen languages, including French, Italian, Swedish, Portuguese, and Arabic, and a film based on Karabash’s adaptation of the novel is set to be released in 2025. Karabash is also the author of Omar’s Letters to His Future Wife.