As the winner of this year’s International Booker Prize is announced, here’s the lowdown on the triumphant book, its author and translator
Taiwan Travelogue
Written by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ
Translated by Lin King
- Original language:
- Taiwanese Mandarin
- Published by And Other Stories
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Winner of the International Booker Prize 2026, Taiwan Travelogue is a bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history and power
May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.
Soon a Taiwanese woman – who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name – is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook.
Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the ‘something’ is.
Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Taiwanese Mandarin in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honour, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unearths lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.
Taiwan Travelogue was announced as winner of the International Booker Prize 2026 on 19 May, 2026.
Yáng Shuāng-zǐ
Winner of the International Booker Prize 2026 for Taiwan Travelogue, Yáng Shuāng-zǐ is a Taiwanese writer of fiction, essays, manga and video game scripts, and literary criticism
More about Yáng Shuāng-zǐ 
Lin King
Winner of the International Booker Prize 2026 for Taiwan Travelogue, Lin King is a writer and translator based in Taipei and New York
More about Lin King In 1930s Taiwan, a Japanese author develops complex feelings towards her local interpreter. With metafictional twists, this is both a delicious romance and an incisive postcolonial novel
The International Booker Prize 2026 judges
What the judges said
‘On a government-sponsored tour of 1930s colonised Taiwan, a Japanese author with an insatiable appetite develops complex feelings towards her local interpreter. Despite the instant spark between the two women, the power imbalance inherent in their relationship proves difficult to navigate. With sumptuous food writing, laugh-out-loud dialogue and metafictional twists, this novel was impossible to put down. Taiwan Travelogue pulls off an incredible double act: it succeeds as both a delicious romance and an incisive postcolonial novel.’
What the critics said
Talya Zax, The Atlantic
‘Yáng has structured her novel like a matryoshka doll: a straightforward story surrounded by many twisting layers of mystery.’
Shahnaz Habib, New York Times
‘Taiwan Travelogue, first published in Mandarin Chinese in 2020, is a delightfully slippery novel about how power shapes relationships, and what travel reveals and conceals… There are multiple afterwords and many footnotes from both fictional and real translators. It all amounts to a virtuosic performance of literary polyphony.’
