To suggest otherwise is to reduce a culture to its trauma
The novel, elaborately framed as a rediscovered memoir, fooled many readers into believing it was a genuine historical text when published in 2020. Author Yang and translator Lin have already garnered major recognition: the original won Taiwan's Golden Tripod Award in 2021, and the English translation won the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2024.
- Taiwan Travelogue, by Yang Shuang-zi and translator Lin King, is the first Mandarin-translated novel to win the International Booker Prize
- The novel is set in 1930s Taiwan under Japanese rule and follows two women on a culinary journey
- Original Mandarin version won Taiwan's Golden Tripod Award in 2021; English translation won National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2024
- The £50,000 prize is split equally between author and translator
Taiwan Travelogue, a novel about forbidden love and Taiwanese cuisine under Japanese rule, becomes the first Mandarin Chinese-translated work to win the International Booker Prize, with the £50,000 award split between author Yang Shuang-zi and translator Lin King.
When Taiwan Travelogue first appeared in 2020, readers encountered what seemed like a historical artifact—a recovered travel memoir, complete with scholarly footnotes and the apparatus of rediscovery. Many believed they were holding something genuine, a window into the past. The book was neither. It was a novel, meticulously constructed to feel like testimony, and it has now become the first work translated from Mandarin Chinese to win the International Booker Prize.
The story unfolds across 1930s Taiwan, when Japan controlled the island. A Japanese writer named Aoyama Chizuko arrives on an official tour, accompanied by a Taiwanese translator, O Chizuru. Between them, across the gap of language and power, something forbidden blooms. The novel moves through their journey as a culinary one—Taiwan's food becomes the landscape where their relationship develops, where colonial history presses against intimate feeling, where culture and desire intersect. It is, in essence, a love letter to food and to the texture of a life lived under occupation.
Yang Shuang-zi, the author, is 41 and works across multiple forms: essays, manga, video game scripts. She wrote Taiwan Travelogue in Mandarin Chinese, and it resonated enough in Taiwan to win the Golden Tripod Award in 2021, the island's highest literary honor. The English translation came later, handled by Taiwanese-American translator Lin King, whose version won the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2024. Now both have shared the International Booker Prize, which awards £50,000 split equally between author and translator—a recognition that translation is not secondary work but essential creation.
Natasha Brown, chair of the judging panel, called the novel "captivating, slyly sophisticated." The judges emphasized in their statement the "vital work of translation," acknowledging that the prize itself was a recognition of two artists, not one. Lin King, speaking before the announcement, articulated what the novel achieves: it refuses to reduce a colonized people to their suffering. "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 humor, still good food, still movies and school and petty fights and romance. To suggest otherwise, she argued, is to diminish a culture to its trauma alone.
Yang had described the research differently, with the dry humor of someone who lived the work: her savings went down, she said, and her weight went up. The novel demanded immersion in Taiwanese food, in the sensory and historical weight of what people ate and how they gathered. That commitment shows in the prose, in the specificity that makes the book feel lived-in rather than invented.
The win marks a threshold. For decades, the International Booker Prize has recognized translated literature, but always from European languages, from the literary centers of the North Atlantic. Taiwan Travelogue's victory suggests a shift—that the prize, and perhaps the broader literary establishment, is beginning to look elsewhere for the voices that matter. A novel written in Mandarin, translated into English by a Taiwanese-American, about two women finding love under Japanese rule in 1930s Taiwan, has now been deemed among the finest works of contemporary fiction. The question now is whether this opens a door or whether it remains a singular exception.
Notable Quotes
It's a captivating, slyly sophisticated novel— Natasha Brown, chair of the International Booker Prize judging panel
No matter how difficult times are, I believe that humans always manage to find flickers of levity and deep wells of love. To suggest otherwise is to reduce a culture to its trauma.— Translator Lin King
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why did so many readers believe this was a genuine historical document when it first came out?
Because Yang constructed it that way deliberately. The footnotes, the framing as a rediscovered memoir, the scholarly apparatus—it all signals authenticity. Readers trust those signals. The book asks you to inhabit that uncertainty, to feel the pleasure of not quite knowing what's real.
And the love story between the two women—is that the heart of it, or is it something else?
It's the lens through which everything else becomes visible. The romance is real, but it's also a way to explore power, translation, what gets lost and found when two people from different worlds try to meet. The food is part of that too—eating together is an act of intimacy and cultural exchange.
Lin King said the book refuses to reduce a culture to its trauma. What does that mean in practice?
It means the novel doesn't treat Japanese occupation as the only thing happening. Yes, it's there, it shapes everything. But people still laughed, still cooked elaborate meals, still went to movies. The book insists on the fullness of life even under constraint. That's harder to write than pure suffering.
Why does it matter that a Mandarin work won this prize?
For decades, the International Booker has recognized translation, but mostly from European languages. This says: we're listening to other parts of the world now. It says Mandarin literature, Taiwanese voices, stories about Asia written by Asians—these belong in the conversation about what matters in contemporary fiction.
Yang spent time and money researching food. How does that show up in the book?
In specificity. In the way a meal becomes a moment of connection or tension. In the knowledge that what people eat tells you something true about who they are and what they value. That kind of detail doesn't come from imagination alone.