Taiwan Travelogue

Winner of the International Booker Prize 2026

"Literature cannot in any way free itself from politics," said Taiwanese author Yang Shuang-zi at the award ceremony at Tate Modern in London, where she received this year's International Booker Prize for the English translation of her novel "Taiwan Travelogue".

The novel is set in occupied Taiwan during the 1930s and tells the love story between a Japanese author and her Taiwanese translator as they travel together through the country. At first glance, Yang Shuang-zi describes in poetic, artful language a romantic journey in which both women discover the beauty and culinary diversity of the then Japanese-occupied land. Only upon closer reading does the literary sophistication become apparent: it is the constraints of unequal power relations and colonialism that separate the lovers - politics intrudes into the most intimate sphere. What does it really mean to taste foreign food? And what happens to a relationship when the external dynamics of power relations subtly permeate the conversations of both women?

Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese author, the novel brings to light a long-neglected chapter of East Asian history - in Taiwan it was a sensational success.

Yang Shuang-zi (born 1984) is a writer, essayist, and literary critic. "Yang Shuang-zi" is her pen name meaning "twins" - a reference to her deceased twin sister, with whom she originally shared it.