site.btaActress Rene Karabash Internationally Recognized for Novel "She Who Remains"

Bulgarian actress Rene Karabash’s novel She Who Remains has reaped success in France and the US. The French translation of the book won the French PEN Translation Prize at the end of 2023. Shortly afterwards, its English translation, done by Izidora Angel, won the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation in the US, Karabash’s team said.

Karabash is the pen name of actress, theatre director, and poet Irena Ivanova.

She Who Remains tells of a peculiar ritual in Albania whereby women in remote locations take an oath and become men. The novel has been translated and published in Egypt, France, Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and North Macedonia, and is soon to be published in several other countries.

The novel will be adapted for the screen at the end of 2024 as a co-production between Bulgaria, Italy, Romania, and Albania. The director will be Kostadin Bonev.

Rene Karabash is also the screenwriter of a new Bulgarian National Television series titled "Sofia's Daughters". The series will be filmed by directors Petar Krumov and Neda Morfova on the southern Black Sea coast this spring.

Karabash is the founder of the Rabbit Hole writers academy, where she herself will be teaching creative writing in April.