Angela Rodel is a literary translator who holds degrees from Yale and UCLA in linguistics and ethnomusicology. Eight Bulgarian novels in her translation have been published in the US and UK. She has received NEA and PEN translation grants. Her translation of Georgi Gospodinov's Physics of Sorrow won the 2016 AATSEEL Prize for Literary Translation, and her translation of his novel Time Shelter made The New Yorker's list of "Best Books of 2022." A two-time Fulbright scholar, she now lives in Sofia, Bulgaria, where she serves as executive director of the Bulgarian-American Fulbright Commission.

Vera Mutafchieva (1929-2009) is one of the most influential Bulgarian writers of the twentieth century and undisputedly the most prominent female novelist in the Bulgarian canon. Mutafchieva is known for her intricate historical novels that offer nuanced insight into the complex layers of Balkan history, with its Slavic, Ottoman, and Byzantine Greek threads. The Case of Cem has been translated into dozens of languages; this is the first-ever English-language translation.