The winners of the 2026 Booker Prize were announced at a ceremony at London’s Tate Modern on May 19. The prestigious award was won by Chinese Taipei author Yang Shuang-shi and translator Lin King for their novel Taiwan Travelogue. First published in 2020, the work made literary history as the first Mandarin-language novel to win the prestigious literary prize in English. The 50 000 pounds prize money awarded to the winners was split equally between the author and translator.
The work is based on travelogues written in the 1930s and follows the journey of two women across the island. The organizers of the award noted that the work covers historical records, social relationships, social characteristics and humanitarian themes, and subtly reveals language and cultural values. The writer Yang Xuan-shi said that through this novel, he aimed to express the complex historical conditions of that time with the power of artistic language.
The publishing rights to this work, which has aroused great interest among fans of world literature, have been sold to 23 countries around the world. It was selected among this year’s shortlist, including Shida Baziar’s “Silent Nights in Tehran”, Daniel Kelman’s “The Director”, Rene Karabash’s “The Remaining Woman” from Bulgaria, Ana Paula Maya’s “As It Is on Earth” from Brazil, and Marie Ndiaye’s “Albassy” from France. As is known, the International Booker Prize has been awarded annually in its current form since 2016 for the best works of fiction by foreign authors translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.
