Yáng Shuāng-zi and Lin King win the International Booker Prize

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":6.95,"text":"Taiwan Travelogue, a historical novel written by Yáng Shuāng-zi and translated into English by Lin King, has won the 2026 International Booker Prize, in a first for a Taiwanese author and for a book originally written in Mandarin Chinese."}],[{"start":23.099999999999998,"text":"Described by the judges as “a captivating, slyly sophisticated novel”, Taiwan Travelogue was the bookmakers’ favourite ahead of the other five shortlisted books, whose subjects ranged from creativity in the face of an authoritarian regime, the plight of a family leaving and returning to Iran over four post-revolutionary decades, a fantastical take on the relationship between mothers and daughters, questions of gender and honour in rural Albania, and the human capacity for violence."}],[{"start":54,"text":"The winning book, on the other hand, “succeeds as both a romance and an incisive postcolonial novel”, said the chair of this year’s judges, author Natasha Brown. Set in 1930s Taiwan, while the island was under Japanese rule, the story follows a fictional Japanese author on a tour of the island, and her deepening relationship with her Taiwanese guide and interpreter. Brown summed up the book’s central question as “can love overcome a power imbalance?”."}],[{"start":83.1,"text":"The FT’s reviewer described the novel, which is disguised as the rediscovered Chinese translation of a fictional travel journal, as “a multi-layered meditation on language and longing, and on the many ways in which we travel only to arrive where we started”."}],[{"start":100.19999999999999,"text":"The original Mandarin Chinese version was published in 2020 and won the prestigious Golden Tripod Award in Taiwan. It has not been published in mainland China."}],[{"start":110.94999999999999,"text":"The author has said: “Using a contemporary Taiwanese lens, I wanted to untangle the complex circumstances that Taiwan’s people faced in the past, and to explore what kind of future we ought to strive toward.” Lin King has added that she “broke countless translation ‘rules’” in her handling of the book’s “complex mix of languages, notations, and footnotes”."}],[{"start":133.04999999999998,"text":"This is the second consecutive win for the Sheffield-based independent publisher And Other Stories, which also published last year’s winner Heart Lamp, a short-story collection written by Banu Mushtaq and translated from the Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi. Taiwan Travelogue is published in the US by Graywolf Press."}],[{"start":152.54999999999998,"text":"Brown was joined on the judging panel by the translator Sophie Hughes, editor and bookseller Troy Onyango, science and mathematics writer Marcus du Sautoy and the novelist and FT literary columnist Nilanjana Roy. Gaby Wood, the chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, said it had taken “a day” for the panel to make their final decision, after each reading the shortlisted books at least three times. The prize was announced at a ceremony held at the Tate Modern in London. "}],[{"start":182.29999999999998,"text":"This year marks a decade of the International Booker in its current form — awarded to a single book rather than an author’s body of work, with the prize of £50,000 shared equally between the winning author and translator. To mark the anniversary, the Booker Prize Foundation commissioned research from NielsenIQ BookData, which showed that in 2025 sales of translated fiction (excluding graphic novels, comics and manga) were up more than 30 per cent on 2016, with 25 to 34 year-olds more likely to be its buyers than any other age group."}],[{"start":218.5,"text":"Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café and follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X"}],[{"start":233.55,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1779254980_6866.mp3"}