BTA: International Booker Prize Winner to Be Announced in London, Bulgarian Writer Rene Karabash Among Nominees

The winner of the 2026 International Booker Prize 2026 will be announced at a ceremony at Tate Modern in London. The winner will be revealed by 2026 jury chair Natasha Brown between 10:00 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. local time on May 19 (midnight to 12:30 a.m. Bulgarian time on May 20). The ceremony will be streamed live on YouTube, the organizers said.

Among this year's nominees is Bulgarian writer Rene Karabash with her novel She Who Remains, translated into English by Izidora Angel. It is the second Bulgarian novel shortlisted for the International Booker Prize after Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel, which won the award in 2023.

Other shortlisted titles this year include The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar, The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia, The Witch by Marie NDiaye and Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-zi.

A total of 128 books translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland over the past 12 months were submitted this year. The jury first selected a longlist of 13 books before narrowing it down to a shortlist of six.

The winning author and translator share a GBP 50,000 prize equally, while the remaining shortlisted titles each receive GBP 5,000, also split between author and translator.

Rene Karabash (born Irena Ivanova) was born in 1989. She is a poet, writer, screenwriter, and playwright. She is the founder and organizer of the writers' academy "Rabbit Hole". For her novel She Who Remains she received the Bulgarian national literary award Elias Canetti, a nomination for Novel of the Year from the "13 Centuries of Bulgaria" National Endowment Fund, and the Peroto (Quill) literary award. The novel has been translated into 15 languages, with its Brazilian edition making it the first Bulgarian novel published in that South American country.

At the end of 2023, Marie Vrina-Nikolov won the French PEN Club Award for her French translation of She Who Remains. In the same year, the English translation by Izidora Angel was awarded the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation (in the United States), and in early 2025, it received the Heim Award from the American PEN Club. The novel has also been nominated for the Swedish literary award Prisma. She Who Remains was included in Service 95's list of the "21 Best Upcoming Books of 2026", the literary book club of performer Dua Lipa.

(This information is published according to an agreement between Armenpress and BTA).