Glimmers In The Dark: The International Booker Prize 2026 Goes To ‘Taiwan Travelogue’

“I dedicate these words to my homeland [Taiwan],” said Yáng Shuāng-zǐ whose novel Taiwan Travelogue, translated into English by Lin King, has been awarded the 2026 International Booker Prize. In her acceptance speech, the Booker winner made it clear that she doesn’t believe art and literature should stay clear of politics. “When Taiwanese people experienced colonial rule and stood before an authoritarian power with overwhelming force, did literature prove useful? I have always believed that literature has power,” she said.

Lin’s translation of the novel includes the translator’s notes, a foreword and an afterword and footnotes, and features three different pronunciation systems for a single kanji character. In her speech, Lin talked about deliberately using strategies that go against the conventions of the English publishing world while translating the book. Generally, the premise of English translations of overseas works is that the translation, and the translator, stay ‘invisible’. But Lin sees her translation as an ‘experimental challenge’ to the English publishing industry. “Compared to the original Taiwanese edition, readers of the English version will need to pay more attention while reading,” she said. “This is because the book refuses to simplify the reality of Taiwan’s multilingualism, multi-cultural diversity and multi-ethnic groups.”

Yáng and Lin’s win marks a historic milestone for Taiwanese literature. Taiwan Travelogue is the first book translated from Mandarin Chinese to win the prestigious prize, which celebrates the best work of fiction translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland annually. The £50,000 prize money is divided equally between the author and the translator. Yáng and Lin are the first Taiwanese and Taiwanese-American winners of the prize. 

Natasha Brown, chair of this year’s Booker judging panel, praised Taiwan Travelogue for pulling off “an incredible double feat, succeeding as both a romance and an incisive postcolonial novel". The Booker judges found the many-layered narrative “captivating and slyly sophisticated”.

Written in the form of a fictional translation of a rediscovered travel memoir by a Japanese writer, Taiwan Travelogue traces a Japanese woman’s travels across 1930s Japan-controlled Taiwan. The visitor is a novelist who has been invited by the government to visit Taiwan, but she has no interest in the imperialist establishment’s official banquets and staid itinerary. She wants to immerse herself in the local culture and eat ‘authentic’ Taiwanese food. The Japanese government arranges for an erudite and charming local Taiwanese interpreter to accompany her. As she explores the island’s rich culinary scene, determined to taste every dish that is on offer, she is drawn to the young interpreter. But theirs is a love that is deeply entangled in the meshes of colonialism, history, power and politics. The power imbalance complicates their relationship at every turn. The novel opens a window to a dark time in Taiwan’s past, embracing the complexity of life lived under colonial occupation, discovering glimmers of humour and hope in the darkness, reflecting on the nuances of identity, language and representation.

Food is the engine that drives the main character’s journey. Taiwanese dishes are described in sensuous and meticulous detail throughout the book, but these descriptions never pander to the tourist’s gaze. Yáng relies on extensive archival research and well-crafted details to paint an engaging portrait of Taiwan’s cuisine. The visitor’s insistence on finding ‘authentic’ Taiwanese food is steeped in irony. The interpreter, who is an excellent cook, uses humble, everyday meals as a means to showcase Taiwan’s cultural resistance to colonial occupation. Food reveals a whole range of Taiwanese social customs and readers get to understand how it is closely tied to the multiethnic landscape. As the narrative unravels, shared meals bring the two women closer; cultural differences and power imbalance weigh less heavily on them when they are seated at the dining table.

In a recent interview with the Booker Prize Foundation, Yáng pointed out that Korea and Taiwan were once colonies of the Japanese Empire. “But Koreans seem to feel uniformly resentful of that history, whereas Taiwanese people regard it with a much more conflicted mix of distaste and nostalgia," she said. In her novel, she attempts to “untangle the complex circumstances Taiwan's people faced in the past, and explore what kind of future we ought to strive toward."

When Taiwan Travelogue was first published in Mandarin Chinese in 2020, it made waves and was awarded Taiwan’s highest literary honour, the Golden Tripod Award. This is Yáng’s first book to be translated into English. The book was awarded the National Book Award for Literature in Translation in 2024 and Asia Society’s inaugural Baifang Schell Book Prize. It has been published or is forthcoming in several languages including Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Ukrainian, Italian, German, Dutch, Danish and Greek. 

The 2026 Booker judges picked it as the winner out of 128 books submitted by publishers. The shortlist included Shida Bazyar's The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran, Rene Karabash’s She Who Remains, Ana Paula Maia's 's On Earth As It Is Beneath, Marie NDiaye's The Witch and The Director by Daniel Kehlmann. Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi from Kannada, was the winner of the International Booker Prize in 2025. Mushtaq became the second Indian author to be awarded the prize after Geetanjali Shree in 2022.