‘Taiwan Travelogue’: The Mandarin Novel That Won the 2026 International Booker Prize

The International Booker Prize honors the best work of fiction translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The prize money—£50,000 (about $67,000)—is split equally between the author and translator.

The award was announced May 19, 2026 at London’s Tate Modern, where the judging panel, chaired by novelist Natasha Brown, praised the book as a captivating and subtly sophisticated work of fiction.

The novel and its creators

Yang Shuang‑zi’s Taiwan Travelogue was first published in Mandarin in Taiwan in 2020. The English translation by Lin King later gained international attention, winning the 2024 U.S. National Book Award for Translated Literature before securing the International Booker Prize.

The win also represents a landmark collaboration:

• Yang became the first Taiwanese writer to win the International Booker Prize.
• Lin King became the first Taiwanese‑American translator to receive the award.

Together, their work helped bring Taiwanese literature into wider global conversation.

A journey through colonial‑era Taiwan

The story is set in 1930s Taiwan during Japanese colonial rule.

The protagonist is Aoyama Chizuko, a young novelist from Nagasaki. In 1938, she travels to Taiwan on a government‑sponsored cultural tour. While the colonial authorities hope she will help promote imperial narratives, Chizuko is far more interested in experiencing everyday life—especially the island’s food culture.

Accompanied by a Taiwanese interpreter and guide, she travels across the island tasting local dishes, meeting people from different social groups, and observing the complex realities of colonial society.

As the journey unfolds, the relationship between the two women deepens into a subtle and emotionally complicated romance shaped by cultural difference, translation, and unequal power dynamics.

A novel disguised as a translation

One of the book’s most distinctive features is its playful narrative structure.

The novel is presented as if it were:

• a rediscovered travel memoir written by a Japanese author, and
• translated and republished decades later.

In other words, the text readers encounter appears to be a translation of an older Japanese work—even though it is actually a contemporary Mandarin novel written by Yang.

This layered design creates a literary “hall of mirrors”:

• A fictional Japanese memoir inside the story
• A Chinese novel presenting itself as that translation
• And the real English translation by Lin King

The structure turns translation itself into part of the story, raising questions about who controls narrative, language, and historical memory.

Food, language, and colonial power

Although the novel often reads like a culinary travelogue—Chizuko is famously described as having a “monstrous appetite”—the food scenes carry deeper meaning.

Through meals, travel notes, and conversations, the story explores:

• Colonial power structures in Japanese‑ruled Taiwan
• Language and translation, and how meaning shifts between cultures
• Identity and class differences between colonizer and colonized
• Who gets to record history—and whose voices are lost

Judge Natasha Brown summarized one of the book’s central questions during the prize announcement: Can love overcome a power imbalance? The novel examines that tension through the relationship between the Japanese writer and her Taiwanese interpreter.

Why the win matters

Beyond its inventive storytelling, Taiwan Travelogue carries strong cultural significance. By weaving together Taiwan’s colonial history, linguistic politics, and personal relationships, the novel challenges conventional historical narratives and highlights how stories change when they cross languages.

Its International Booker victory signals a broader shift as Taiwanese literature and Mandarin‑language fiction gain greater visibility on the global literary stage.