Booker: Taiwan’s first

Yang Shuang-zi is the first Taiwanese writer ever shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, for her novel *Taiwan Travelogue*. (thebookerprizes.com) The Booker Prize Foundation announced the 2026 shortlist on March 31, choosing six finalists from a longlist of 13 and an initial field of 128 submitted books. The winner will be named on May 19 at Tate Modern in London. (thebookerprizes.com) *Taiwan Travelogue* was written in Mandarin Chinese by Yang and translated into English by Lin King, with the prize splitting its £50,000 award equally between author and translator. Each shortlisted book also receives £5,000, divided equally between the two. (thebookerprizes.com) The novel is set in 1938, when Japan ruled Taiwan, and follows a young Japanese novelist traveling the island with a Taiwanese interpreter. The Booker Prize site describes it as a story about language, history and power, built around food, travel and a relationship between two women. (thebookerprizes.com) That setting places the book inside a period that still shapes how Taiwan is written about abroad: Japanese colonial rule lasted from 1895 to 1945, and Yang’s novel revisits that history through fiction rather than official narrative. The Booker judges called it both a romance and a postcolonial novel. (thebookerprizes.com) Yang said the shortlist was not a solo achievement. Speaking in Bangkok on April 12, she said the recognition “belongs to an entire team, especially the translator,” and argued that Taiwan needs more translated books to reach readers overseas. (focustaiwan.tw) She said Taiwan’s literary output extends beyond novels to poetry, essays and theater, and that too few Taiwanese novels are being translated now. She also said Taiwan needs stronger incentives for foreign translators competing among many Chinese-language works. (focustaiwan.tw) The shortlist also extends a run of recognition for the book outside Taiwan. The novel first appeared in Mandarin in 2020, won Taiwan’s Golden Tripod Award, and its English edition won the 2024 National Book Award for Literature in Translation in the United States. (thebookerprizes.com; moc.gov.tw) Taiwan had reached the International Booker longlist before, with Wu Ming-yi’s *The Stolen Bicycle* in 2018, but not the final six. This time, Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture said *Taiwan Travelogue* is also the only Asian-authored work on the 2026 shortlist. (moc.gov.tw) For now, the shortlist gives Taiwan a place in one of English-language publishing’s biggest translation prizes — and Yang is using that attention to press for more bridges between Taiwanese writers, translators and readers abroad. (focustaiwan.tw; thebookerprizes.com)