She Who Remains

High in the Accursed Mountains, in a village ruled by the ancient laws of the Kanun, Bekja escapes an arranged marriage by becoming a sworn virgin, renouncing her womanhood to live as a man. Her decision sets off a brutal chain of events, destroying her family and separating her from the one she loves the most. Years later, as Bekija - now Matija - tells their story to a visiting journalist, long-buried truths come to light, along with the realisation of all that might have been.

Rene Karabash (b. Irena Ivanova) is a Bulgarian poet, writer, screenwriter, actor and playwright. She has won multiple awards for her work, including several Best Actress awards for her role in the film Godless. Her debut novel, She Who Remains, was awarded the 2019 Elias Canetti Prize, Bulgaria's most prestigious literary award. It has been translated into over a dozen languages, and a film, adapted by the author, is forthcoming. Karabash is also the author of the collection Omar's Letters to His Future Wife, and is working on her second novel.

Izidora Angel is a Bulgarian-born writer and literary translator based in Chicago. Her work has appeared in A Public Space, Astra, Best Literary Translations, Chicago Reader and elsewhere. She is the translator of Hristo Karastoyanov's The Same Night Awaits Us All, Nataliya Deleva's Four Minutes, and Yordanka Beleva's Keder, for which she won a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Angel received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant and the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation for She Who Remains. She is completing her debut memoir, Solomon's Daughter, first excerpted in The American Scholar.