Overview
- Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-zi won the International Booker, which the prize organizers announced on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, and the £50,000 award is split £25,000 each between Yang and translator Lin King.
- The win is the first time a work originally written in Mandarin has taken the International Booker and it is also the first time the prize has gone to an author from Taiwan.
- Set in 1938 under Japanese rule, the novel follows a Japanese writer and her Taiwanese interpreter as it probes colonial power, travel and food without relying on a conventional historical account.
- Lin King said the English edition preserves multilingual pronunciations, translator notes and cultural references to resist simplification, a choice that the ceremony highlighted as an editorial and political act.
- The book already won Taiwan’s Golden Tripod and the 2024 U.S. National Book Award for translated literature, and the Booker win is likely to raise global attention for Taiwanese writing and the role of translators in publishing.