International Booker prize goes to novel originally written in Mandarin Chinese for the first time

Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King, pulled off an ‘incredible double feat’ in succeeding as ‘both a romance and an incisive postcolonial novel’ Taiwan Travelogue, a novel written by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and translated by Lin King, has become the first book originally written in Mandarin Chinese to win the International Booker prize. Yáng and King were announced as the winners of the £50,000 prize – to be split equally between them – during a ceremony at Tate Modern, London, on Tuesday evening. The novel is presented as a translation of a rediscovered memoir, written from the perspective of a novelist who sails to Japan-occupied Taiwan in 1938 and embarks on a culinary tour in the company of an interpreter, with whom she falls in love. The book features fictional footnotes and afterwords by the book’s characters as well as “real” ones by King, which “wrap an intriguing metafictional layer around its core love story”, said judging chair and novelist Natasha Brown. It’s the second year in a row that the Sheffield-based independent press And Other Stories has taken home the prize, following Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi, last year. Taiwan Tr