Reading guide: She Who Remains by Rene Karabash, translated by Izidora Angel
Dark and poetic, She Who Remains is a novel about identity, gender, love, freedom, and societal norms
Izidora Angel
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. Her English translation of She Who Remains by Rene Karabash was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026.
Author photo © Albana Pepaj
Told with understated poetry, this novel perfectly captures the slippery uncertainty of painful memories. Matija is a compelling narrator, whose story swept us up completely. She Who Remains is an unforgettable modern fairy tale
— The International Booker Prize 2026 judges on She Who Remains
All nominated books
A dark and poetic novel about identity, gender, love, freedom, and societal norms
Translated by Izidora Angel
