Taiwan Travelogue, a novel about forbidden love and Taiwanese food, has won the International Booker Prize, becoming the first novel translated from Mandarin Chinese to win the prestigious award.

“We’re delighted to announce the winner of the International Booker Prize 2026, supported by Bukhman Philanthropies, is Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King,” the official Instagram handle of The Bookers Prize shared on Tuesday.

“Taiwan Travelogue pulls off an incredible double feat: it succeeds as both a romance and an incisive postcolonial novel. As judges, we’ve enjoyed rich discussions about the many layers of this book. It’s a captivating, slyly sophisticated novel,” said Natasha Brown, Chair of judges.

Taiwan Travelogue, written by Taiwanese author Yang Shuang-zi and Taiwanese-American translator Lin King, follows two women on their culinary tour across Taiwan in the 1930s, when the island was under Japanese rule, as per a report by BBC.

The novel centres on a fictional Japanese writer, Aoyama Chizuko, who is on a government-sponsored tour of Taiwan with a Taiwanese translator, O Chizuru, whom she falls in love with. Through their lens, the novel explores issues of love, culture, colonial history and power.