Rene Karabash’s novel She Who Remains has been selected for the longlist of the International Booker Prize, according to information published on the award’s official website and cited by BTA. This marks the second time a Bulgarian novel has reached this stage of the prestigious competition, following Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter, translated by Angela Rodel, which won the prize in 2023.
Rene Karabash is the pen name of Irena Ivanova, a Bulgarian author born in 1989. She works across several genres as a poet, prose writer, screenwriter and playwright, and founded the writers’ academy “Zaeshka Dupka.” Остайница (“She Who Remains”) was translated into English by Izidora Angel.
The book has already received significant recognition in Bulgaria, including the national “Elias Canetti” literary award, a nomination for Novel of the Year from the National Endowment Fund “13 Centuries of Bulgaria,” and the “Peroto” literary prize. It has been published in 15 languages, and its Brazilian edition made it the first Bulgarian novel to appear in Brazil.
International distinctions have followed. At the end of 2023, Marie Vrinat-Nikolov was awarded the French PEN Club Prize for her translation of the novel into French. That same year, Isidora Angel’s English version received the Gulf Coast Translation Prize in the United States, and in early 2025 it was honored with the HEIM Translation Fund Award from PEN America. The novel has also been nominated for Sweden’s Prisma literary award and was included in the “21 Best Upcoming Books of 2026” selection by Service 95, the book club platform founded by singer Dua Lipa.
She Who Remains explores themes of identity, love, personal freedom and the pressure of social conventions through a poetic and provocative narrative. It is the first Bulgarian novel to focus on the phenomenon of Albanian sworn virgins – women who, under the traditional Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini, take a lifelong vow of chastity and assume male social roles. Known by various names such as mushkara, virginesha, mushkabanya, harambasa or vowed maiden, these figures occupy a distinct place in Balkan cultural history.
Formally, the novel stands out for its unconventional structure. Written without capital letters and full stops, it employs a postmodern stream-of-consciousness technique that moves fluidly between past and present. The text unfolds in a continuous flow, inviting readers to surrender to its rhythm rather than seek clear-cut boundaries or resolution.