'Taiwan Travelogue' wins 2026 International Booker Prize

Taipei, May 20 (CNA) "Taiwan Travelogue" (臺灣漫遊錄), a novel by Taiwanese writer Yang Shuang-zi (楊双子) and translated into English by Lin King (金翎), has won the 2026 International Booker Prize, becoming the first Taiwanese work to win the award.

The win, announced Tuesday in London, came after Lin's translation of the novel received the 2024 U.S. National Book Award for Translated Literature, also a first for Taiwanese literature.

The novel already made history earlier this year when it became the first work by a Taiwanese author to reach the shortlist of the International Booker Prize.

First published in 2020, "Taiwan Travelogue" is a work of historical fiction set in 1938 during Taiwan's Japanese colonial era.

The novel follows the friendship between a Taiwanese woman and a Japanese woman through a culinary and railway journey across Taiwan, exploring questions of identity, empire and cultural exchange.

The annual International Booker Prize recognizes works of fiction translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. Yang and Lin will split the £50,000 (US$66,200) prize.

According to the Booker Prize Foundation, this year's shortlist featured writers and translators from eight countries and works originally written in five languages.

The international reach of "Taiwan Travelogue" has continued to expand, with translation rights sold in more than 20 languages, including English, Japanese, Korean, German and Dutch.