Taiwanese author Yang Shuang-zi and translator Lin King have won the 2026 International Booker Prize for Taiwan Travelogue, a layered historical romance set in 1930s Japanese-occupied Taiwan. The award marks the first time a novel originally written in Mandarin Chinese has earned the prize for fiction translated into English.
Chaired by British novelist Natasha Brown, the judging panel praised the book as a captivating and artful work that interrogates language, power and colonial dynamics while still functioning as a romance. Presented as a travel memoir by a fictional Japanese novelist on a culinary tour of Taiwan, the story follows that writer’s fraught relationship with a local interpreter and examines questions of class, empire and whether love can bridge deep power imbalances.
Yang, who writes fiction, essays, manga and video game scripts, said she set out to untangle the complicated legacy of Taiwan’s period under Japanese rule. She also joked that researching the novel’s travel and food themes cost her savings and added to her waistline. Taiwan Travelogue was first published in Chinese in 2020 and is Yang’s debut work to reach English readers.
Taiwanese-American translator Lin King was singled out by the judges for providing a translation that adds an extra layer to a book already obsessed with the limits and possibilities of cross-language communication. The English edition had earlier won the US National Book Award in the translation category in 2024.
The International Booker, which honors fiction translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland, awards 50,000 pounds in prize money shared equally between author and translator. The prize was created to raise the profile of literature in other languages in Britain and to recognize the craft of literary translators. It is presented alongside the Booker Prize for English-language fiction and a new Children’s Booker Prize set to debut next year.
