Taiwan Travelogue (臺灣漫遊錄), a novel by Taiwanese writer Yang Shuang-zi (楊?子) and translated into English by Lin King (金翎), has won this year’s International Booker Prize, becoming the first Taiwanese work to win the award.
The win, announced on Tuesday in London, came after Lin’s translation of the novel received the 2024 US National Book Award for Translated Literature — also a first for Taiwanese literature.
The novel already made history earlier this year when it became the first work by a Taiwanese author to be shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.
Photo: EPA
Published in 2020, Taiwan Travelogue is a work of historical fiction set during Taiwan’s Japanese colonial era.
The novel follows the relationship between a Japanese writer and her Taiwanese interpreter as they embark on a culinary and railway journey across Taiwan, exploring questions of identity, empire and cultural exchange.
“This is a book that surprises and isn’t perhaps what it seems like on the surface,” said Natasha Brown, chair of this year’s prize jury.
It “pulls off an incredible double feat: It succeeds as both a romance and an incisive postcolonial novel,” Brown said. “It’s a captivating, slyly sophisticated novel.”
The annual International Booker Prize recognizes works of fiction translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland.
Yang and Lin are to split the ￡50,000 (US$67,009) prize.
According to the Booker Prize Foundation, this year’s shortlist featured writers and translators from eight countries and works originally written in five languages.
The international reach of Taiwan Travelogue has continued to expand, with translation rights sold in more than 20 languages, including English, Japanese, Korean, German and Dutch.
Yang said her book was part of a long tradition of Taiwanese texts asking what kind of future and nation Taiwanese want.
In her acceptance speech, Yang said that, contrary to the view that art and literature must be kept far from politics, she believes literature “cannot be kept separate from the soil in which it has grown.”
“When surveying the modern history of Taiwan’s literature, it is apparent that we writers have been asking the same questions for the past century: What kind of future do the people of Taiwan want? What kind of nation do the people of Taiwan want?” she said, adding that Taiwan Travelogue, too, joins the long list of texts that investigate these questions.
Noting that Taiwanese have endured “geopolitical forces so much greater than our own,” such as colonial regimes and threats of invasion, Yang said she nevertheless believes that literature wields power.
“I believe in literature’s power because in the life of the mind, literature has never ceded ground or given up on the dialogue between people,” she said.
Yang dedicated the closing words of her speech to “my homeland, Taiwan” saying that the centuries-old tradition of inquiry in Taiwan’s literature was “the centuries-old pursuit of freedom and equality by Taiwan’s people.”
“I feel very fortunate to have been born Taiwanese. I am very proud today to stand before you as a writer from Taiwan,” she said.
During a speech marking his second year in office, President William Lai (賴清德) congratulated Yang and King on the award, saying it showed that young Taiwanese “can shine on the world stage.”
Additional reporting by AFP
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