Taiwanese writer Yáng Shuāng-zǐ’s novel Taiwan Travelogue, translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King, has won the 2026 International Booker Prize. The award, which carries a prize of £50,000 divided equally between the writer and the translator, was announced at a ceremony at Tate Modern in London on May 19.The International Booker Prize describes the winning novel “a bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history and power.” Twenty-six-year-old Japanese novelist Aoyama Chizuko arrives in Taiwan, then a Japanese colony, before the Second World War, where she embarks on a culinary tour in the company of her interpreter Chizuko. As a relationship develops between the two women, themes of power, colonialism, and social hierarchies are explored with food as a narrative glue.According to Natasha Brown, the chair of five-member jury, “This book doesn’t shy away from the complexities (both real and fictional) of its journey into the English language. Instead, it uses the hallmarks of a more traditional text – introductions, footnotes, afterwords – to wrap an intriguing metafictional layer around its core love story. Lin King’s deft translation perfectly conveys the nuances of the novel’s narrative voices.”The Scroll review of the novel says: “Yáng Shuāng-zĭ’s Taiwan Travelogue is a Matryoshka doll of a novel. Its making is as complicated and layered as the story it tries to tell – where the translator and author change roles, the identity of the author shape-shifts, and a controversy about its authorship and corrections complicate subsequent editions.Yang Jo-tzu, 41, uses “Shuang-zi" as a pen name – meaning “twins” – to honour her twin, Yang Jo-hui, who died of cancer in 2015. Lin King is a Taiwanese-American writer and translator.Taiwan Travelogue is the second successive International Booker Prize win for And Other Stories of the UK, who also published the 2025 winner, Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp and Other Stories, translated from Kannada, by Deepa Bhasthi.