21/05/2026
大恭喜！Congrats!
不過，什麼時候會有法文版呢？
When do we have a French version?
Yáng Shuāng-zǐ has become Taiwan’s first author to win the International Booker Prize, announced today in London, with “Taiwan Travelogue,” along with the novel’s English-language translator, Lin King.
First published in Taiwan in 2020, judges praised the translated work as “an insightful postcolonial novel” wrapped inside a moving and layered story, the book explores food, memory, empire, and human relationships in 1930s Taiwan under Japanese rule.
In the words of Chair of Judges Natasha Brown, the novel “doesn’t shy away from the complexities — both real and fictional — of its journey into the English language.” She also noted its use of introductions, footnotes, and afterwords to build a metafictional frame around a central love story, asking: “Can love overcome a power imbalance?”
In her acceptance speech, Yáng described literature and art as inseparable from the social ground on which they emerge, with Taiwanese literature long asking the same central question: what future do the people of Taiwan envision for themselves and their country? She also framed the century-long question in Taiwanese literature as tied to the pursuit of freedom and equality and said it is a privilege to represent Taiwan.
Lin King struck a very different tone in her speech: “When Russia invaded Ukraine, I made the explicit decision that rather than translating Sinophone works indiscriminately, I would only translate writing from Taiwan for the foreseeable future. I will continue to do so, I told myself, until the day comes that my homeland's sovereignty is no longer a provocation or a punchline, until no English speaker feels comfortable saying to me, “I really should come visit you in Taiwan while it still exists.”
Congrats to Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and Lin King.
