Taiwanese author Yáng Shuāng-zǐ has won the 2026 International Booker Prize for her novel, ‘Taiwan Travelogue’, translated by Lin King. The prestigious award was announced on May 19, 2026, during a ceremony held at London’s Tate Modern.
The win marks a significant moment in literary history, as ‘Taiwan Travelogue’ is the first book translated from Taiwanese Mandarin, also referred to as Mandarin Chinese, to receive the International Booker Prize. Yáng Shuāng-zǐ is also the first Taiwanese author to win, and Lin King is the first Taiwanese and American translator to be honored with the prize. The £50,000 prize money will be shared equally between the author and the translator.
‘Taiwan Travelogue’ takes the form of a fictional translation of a rediscovered Japanese colonial-era travel monograph. The novel delves into complex themes of history, power, class, colonialism, and love, exploring them through the lens of a friendship between two women on a culinary tour of 1930s Japan-controlled Taiwan.
The 2026 judging panel, chaired by award-winning author Natasha Brown and including members Marcus du Sautoy, Sophie Hughes, Troy Onyango, and Nilanjana S. Roy, praised ‘Taiwan Travelogue’ as ‘captivating’ and ‘cunningly sophisticated.’ They noted that the book ‘succeeds in being both a romance and a sharp post-colonial novel.’ The novel, originally published in Mandarin Chinese in 2020, previously won Taiwan’s highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award, in the same year, and went on to win the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2024.