Taiwanese novel longlisted for U.S. translated literature award

Taipei, Sept. 11 (CNA) The English translation of Yang Shuang-zi's (楊双子) "Taiwan Travelogue" (臺灣漫遊錄) has been longlisted for the United States-based National Book Awards' Translated Literature prize.

Set in 1930s Taiwan, the novel, translated from Chinese by Lin King (金翎), "follows a fictional Japanese writer and her relationship with the charming yet closed-off Taiwanese woman who serves as her interpreter," according to the article announcing the longlist published on Tuesday.

The awards' website added that the book "unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships."

The novel was published by Springhill Publishing in Taiwan in 2020, with its English translation set to be published on Nov. 12 by Graywolf Press in the U.S., according to the Taipei Cultural Center in New York's congratulatory Facebook post.

It was chosen as one of the ten translated works in the longlist among 141 nominations, the post added.

Yang Shuang-zi was originally a shared pseudonym for twin sisters Yang Jo-tzu (楊若慈) and Yang Jo-hui (楊若暉). The elder sister Jo-tzu was responsible for creating works while the younger did the historical research and Japanese translations. Shuang-zi in Japanese Kanji means twins.

After her younger sister died from cancer in 2015, Yang Jo-hui continued with the pseudonym to honor her bond with her sister.

The translator, King, was born in the U.S. but grew up in Taiwan. Other than translation works, she has also received the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, according to the awards website.

Finalists for the award will be revealed on Oct.1, and the winner announced live at the awards ceremony on Nov. 20, New York time, the website said.

The National Book Awards, now in its 75th year, established the translated literature category in 1967. The awards were counted as "the world's most prestigious literary prizes" by the New York Times, together with the Man Booker Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature, according to its website.

The Japanese version of the novel had become the first of Taiwan's works to win Japan's "Best Translation Award" in May, 2024.