A story about Taiwanese food and love between two women won the International Booker Prize 2026 on Tuesday (May 19, 2026).

Taiwanese writer Yáng Shuāng-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue, translated from the Mandarin Chinese by Lin King, is experimental in form. It contains a scholarly foreword, afterwords, fictional footnotes and real translator’s notes.

The novel begins in 1938. Aoyama Chizuko, a Japanese novelist from Nagasaki, arrives in Taiwan, a Japanese colony, on a government-sponsored tour. Disinterested in the official events or the imperialist agenda, she instead decides to explore Taiwan through its food, guided by her voracious appetite. She befriends a charming and reserved Taiwanese woman, Chizuru, who serves as both her interpreter and an exceptional cook.

Chizuko becomes deeply fond of her companion, even urging her to break off her engagement, but Chizuru maintains a distance. Whether she returns Chizuko’s feelings is the question that propels the novel forward. Their relationship — shaped by their different class backgrounds, with one woman from the empire and the other from the colony — reflects the complex dynamics of power.

The prize was announced by Natasha Brown, chair of the 2026 judges, at a ceremony at London’s Tate Modern on May 19. In announcing it, the committee said, “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.”

The novel is Yáng Shuāng-zi’s first to be translated into English and the first translation from the Mandarin Chinese to win the International Booker Prize. This is also the second year in a row that the independent press, And Other Stories, has taken home the prize, following Heart Lamp last year.

Yáng and King will split the £50,000 prize, which recognises the best fiction translated into English, equally between them.