site.btaUPDATED "She Who Remains" by Rene Karabash on Long List for International Booker Prize

She Who Remains by Bulgarian author Rene Karabash is on the long list for the 2026 International Booker Prize, the Booker Prize Foundation announced Tuesday on its website. The listed book is the English edition, translated by Izidora Angel.

Karabash's publisher Manol Peykov of the Janet 45 publishing house rejoiced it with a "Fantastic news!" post on Facebook.

She Who Remains is presented as "a dark and poetic novel about identity, gender, love, freedom, and societal norms". It tells a story high in Albania’s Accursed Mountains, where Bekija 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. 

The Sofia Literary Agency, which represents Karabash abroad, expressed "heartfelt gratitude to the incredibly talented Rene Karabash (Irena Hristova Ivanova), as well as to her translators, readers, and publishers around the world and especially to her Bulgarian publisher Janet 45".

They also thank Peirene Press and Sandorf Passage – the UK and US publishers of the novel.

The novel has already been translated in Arabic (Sefsafa Culture and Publishing, trans. Khairi Hamdan), Bosnian (BuyBook, trans. Ksenija Banović), French (trans. Marie Vrinat-Nikolov), Greek (Metaichmio Publications, trans. Spyros Pappas), Italian (Bottega Errante, trans. Giorgia Spadoni), Macedonian (Vostok Publishing, trans. Mihajlo Sviderski), Polish (Wydawnictwo Poznanskie, trans. Mariola Mikolajczak), Swedish (Ersatz, trans. Hanna Sandborgh) and is in the works for Albanian (Toena, trans. Milena Selimi), Brazilian Portuguese (Editora Ercolano, trans. Rada Gankova), German (Mauke, trans. Elvira Bormann), Hungarian (Europa Rights, trans. Gergely Kovacs), Serbian (Heliks, trans. Jasmina Jovanovic), Spanish (Itineraria Editorial, trans. Maria Vutova) and Turkish (Ithaki Yayinlari, trans. Sevcan Kence), Sofia Literary Agency says.

Sofia Literary Agency says it is "incredibly proud that the success of Karabash’s debut novel gives more visibility on Bulgarian literature, encourages translations from less popular languages and most of all – inspires independent publishers to work with undiscovered voices".

This is the second Bulgarian novel within the last three years to make the International Booker's longlist, after Georgi Gospodinov's Time Shelter, translated by Angela Rodel, which won the award in 2023.

Who is Rene Karabash

Karabash, whose real name is Irena Ivanova, was born in 1989. She is a poet, novelist, screenwriter, and playwright.

She is the founder and organizer of the writers’ academy Rabbit Hole.

For her novel She Who Remains (original name Ostaynitza), she received Bulgaria’s national literary award Elias Canetti National Literary Award, as well as a nomination for Novel of the Year from the 13 Centuries Bulgaria National Endowment Fund and the The Quill Literary Award.

The novel has been translated into 15 languages, with its Brazilian edition making it the first Bulgarian novel to be published in Brazil.

At the end of 2023, Marie Vrinat-Nikolov won the French PEN Club Translation Award for her French translation of Ostaynitza. In the same year, the English translation by Izidora Angel received the Gulf Coast Translation Prize in the United States, followed in early 2025 by the prestigious HEIM Translation Prize from the American PEN Club.

The novel was also shortlisted for Sweden’s Prisma Literary Prize. Ostaynitza has been included in the list of 21 Best Upcoming Books of 2026 by Service 95 Book Club founded by Dua Lipa.