Lin King '22 Wins 2026 International Booker Prize
Update
On May 19, 2026, at a ceremony at the Tate Modern in London, Lin King '22 won the International Booker Prize for her translation of Taiwan Travelogue (Graywolf, 2024) by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ.
The first book translated from Mandarin Chinese to win the prize, Taiwan Travelogue surpassed 127 titles via an intensive, months-long selection process.
The International Booker is the world’s most influential award for translated fiction, fostering a global community of readers and writers, and celebrating the vital art of translation. The £50,000 prize is divided equally between the author and translator.
In a recent interview for the Prize committee, King elucidated the pleasures of reading translated fiction: "To me, the best form of travel is with a friend who knows our destination well and can provide context, commentary, and stories. Translated fiction is like one such friend."
Encounters with friends like this are of vital significance. "With rising geopolitical tensions everywhere," she continues, "travel via translation becomes even more important for fostering empathy across borders."
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Update
Taiwan Travelogue, translated by Writing alum Lin King '22, has just been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Out of 128 submitted titles, King’s translation was first selected for a spot on the longlist as one of thirteen. Now one of six shortlisted titles, Taiwan Travelogue is a finalist for this prestigious award.
In a recent interview for the Prize committee, King claimed that she found translation prizes critical for illuminating the voices of writers who might not be as widely read by English readers. "The anglophone world famously publishes relatively little in translation," she said. "For literary awards to recognize and promote translated fiction as ‘just as important’ has been critical for broadening readers’ exposure to different worldviews."
The winning title will be announced at a ceremony on May 19, 2026 at the Tate Modern in London.
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Original: March 11, 2026
The International Booker Prize has announced its longlist for 2026, and out of 128 works of fiction translated into English, 13 have made the list, including the National Book Award-winning translation of Yáng Shuāng-zǐ’s Taiwan Travelogue, translated from Mandarin Chinese by Writing alum Lin King '22.
The metafictional novel, presented as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, follows protagonist Aoyama Chizuko, a Japanese novelist, traveling through Taiwan with a translator in 1938, when Taiwan was a Japanese colony. As the novel progresses, Chizuko draws closer and closer to her translator, Chizuro, who helps her experience "real island life" and cuisine but otherwise keeps herself at a careful distance that Chizuko can't understand—until a painful separation makes clear the complexity of their work and friendship.
The judges of this year’s International Booker Prize competition says Taiwan Travelogue, "pulls off an incredible double act: it succeeds as both a delicious romance and an incisive postcolonial novel."
Lin King has translated numerous book-length translations from Mandarin to English with Greywolf Press and Strangers Press among others. Her translation of Taiwan Travelogue by Yand Suang-Zi was the winner of the National Book Award in Translated Literature 2024. Her fiction has been published in Joyland, One Story, and Boston Review where she was a semifinalist for the Aura Estrada Short Story Contest. She has also received the PEN/Robert J Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. King is based between Taiwan and New York.