Taiwan Travelogue wins International Booker Prize

A novel about two women on a food tour of Taiwan in the 1930s has won the International Booker Prize.

Taiwan Travelogue, written by Taiwanese author Yang Shuang-zi and translated by Taiwanese-American Lin King, is the first novel translated from Mandarin Chinese to win the award.

The book follows a fictional Japanese writer, Aoyama Chizuko, on a government-sponsored tour of Taiwan with her Taiwanese translator, O Chizuru, who becomes her lover. The story is set when the island was under Japanese rule.

The novel is framed as the translation of a rediscovered travel memoir with fictional footnotes. When it was first published in 2020, many readers believed it was a genuine historic text.

"It's a captivating, slyly sophisticated novel," said Natasha Brown, chair of the judging panel.

The book explores themes of love, culture, colonial history and power.

"Research for the novel's central themes of travel and food changed my life in two obvious ways," Yang said before the win. "My savings went down; my weight went up."

Yang, 41, also writes essays, manga and video game scripts. Her original Mandarin Chinese version won Taiwan's Golden Tripod Award in 2021.

Translator Lin King said the book balances the sorrow and joys of life under Japanese control.

"No matter how difficult times are, I believe that humans always manage to find flickers of levity and deep wells of love," she said.

"There was still humour, good food, movies, school, petty fights, and romance," King said. "To suggest otherwise is to reduce a culture to its trauma."