International Booker prize goes to novel originally written in Mandarin Chinese for the first time

Taiwan Travelogue became the first Mandarin Chinese–original book to win the International Booker Prize. Yang Shuang-zi and Lin King received the 50,000 prize split equally at Tate Modern in London. The novel is framed as a translation of a rediscovered memoir, narrated by a novelist who sails to Japan-occupied Taiwan in 1938 and begins a culinary tour with an interpreter, with whom she falls in love. Fictional footnotes and afterwords by characters, alongside real afterwords by King, add a metafictional layer around the central romance. The book also received Taiwan’s Golden Tripod award and the translation won a 2024 US National Book Award for Translated Literature.

"It's the second year in a row that the Sheffield-based independent press And Other Stories has taken home the prize, following Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi, last year. Taiwan Travelogue pulls off an incredible double feat, added Brown, succeeding as both a romance and an incisive postcolonial novel. Yang and King are the first Taiwanese and Taiwanese-American winners of the prize, which recognises the best fiction translated into English."

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