Taiwan Travelogue, a novel by Taiwanese writer Yang Shuang-zi (楊?子), is among six shortlisted titles for this year’s International Booker Prize — the first time a Taiwanese author has reached the final stage of the prestigious award.
The Booker Prize Foundation on Tuesday announced the finalists from a longlist of 13 titles, narrowed down from 128 submissions.
The annual prize recognizes fiction translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. Author-translator pairs who make the shortlist receive ￡5,000 (US$6,650) and the winners, to be announced on May 19, would split a ￡50,000 grand prize.
Photo: screengrab from the Internet
The foundation said the novel’s appearance on the shortlist represented the first time a Taiwanese writer had made the cut and that a victory for the novel would represent a historic first for Taiwan.
This year’s shortlist features writers and translators from eight countries: Taiwan, the UK, the US, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France and Germany, the foundation said.
Five of the six shortlisted authors and four of the six shortlisted translators are women, and the selected works were originally written in five languages: Chinese, Bulgarian, French, German and Portuguese.
First published in 2020, Taiwan Travelogue is set in 1938 and is a work of historical fiction that explores friendship and colonial identity through a culinary journey across Taiwan.
It has been translated into several languages including Japanese, English and Korean.
Its English translator, Lin King (金翎), previously won the US National Book Award for Translated Literature for her work on the novel — also a first for Taiwanese literature.
In Taipei, Culture Minister Li Yuan (李遠) congratulated Yang, thanking her for bringing Taiwan to global attention through literature.
The Ministry of Culture said that the novel’s path to international success was supported by government initiatives, including a youth creative grant and a translation funding program.
The cultural division of the Taipei Representative Office in the UK is planning a series of literary talks and book signings across the UK later this year that would feature Yang and King.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
RSS