June 6, Kathmandu – The Mandarin Chinese novel Taiwan Travelogue has won this year’s esteemed Booker Prize. Originally written in Mandarin, this book is the first ever to receive this prestigious international award in its original language. On Tuesday evening, at a special ceremony held at Tate Modern in London, Taiwanese author Yang Shuangji and Taiwanese-American translator Lin King were announced as the winners. They will share prize money equivalent to approximately 8.5 million Nepalese Rupees, divided equally between author and translator. They are also the first Taiwanese and Taiwanese-American citizens to win this prize.
Set against the backdrop of Taiwan under Japanese rule in 1938, the novel tells the story of a Japanese writer who embarks on a journey to Taiwan’s culinary scenes, during which she falls in love with her interpreter. The narrative is presented as a translated old travel memoir and includes fictional footnotes by the characters alongside “real” footnotes by translator Lin. Jury panel chair and novelist Natasha Brown praised the writing style, saying, “This book achieves a dual success as both a romance and a sharp post-colonial novel.”
In an interview with the Booker Prize website, author Yang explained the inspiration behind the novel: “Both Korea and Taiwan were colonies of the Japanese Empire at one time. However, while Koreans express uniform dissatisfaction about this history, Taiwanese view it with a complex, conflicted mix of hatred and nostalgia. I wanted to explore this complicated situation from a contemporary Taiwanese perspective.” Alongside novels, Yang also writes essays, manga, and video game scripts. Influenced by the rising popularity of Taiwanese romance novels in the 1990s, he began writing himself. Similarly, translator Lin is an original storyteller, with her debut novel Weave soon to be published.
