In Translation: A Book Club / Chinese

Join us for the fourth series of In Translation: A Book Club, where we will explore Taiwan Travelogue/臺灣漫遊錄, the 2026 International Booker Prize Winner, by Yang Shuang-zi  

Read the book in either the Chinese original or in the English translation by Lin King, and join the discussion facilitated by Joshua Stenberg 

Purchase the book via Lost in Books, our multilingual bookshop, choose your session and register today  

Session 1: Saturday 01 August 2026. 1 pm – 3 pm 

Seminar room 1, Ultimo Community Centre. 40 William Henry Street ULTIMO NSW 2007. Enter from via Bulwara Road  

Session 2:  

Think+DO Tank Foundation Community House, 2/40 Harris Street, Fairfield. 

About the Book 

Taiwan Travelogue, by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and translated by Lin King, is many things: a whirlwind tour of Taiwan in the colonial period, a homage to the pleasures of food, a disquisition on the pathways of translation, an investigation of national and ethnic identity, possibly a queer romance.  

Winner of Taiwan's highest literary award (2021) and the National Book Award (2024) as well as the International Booker Prize (2026), Taiwan Travelogue's premise is a lecture-tour of Taiwan by the fictional writer Aoyama Chizuko, and focuses on her relationship with her local guide.  

Natasha Brown, judging chair of the International Booker, hailed the book's “incredible double feat” as “both a romance and an incisive postcolonial novel”. 

The novel speaks to how fiction can reimagine history to speak to the present, drawing a complex portrait of colonial dynamics on the island in the shadow of a looming war. King's translation expertly conveys the multilingualism of the island for the Anglophone reader.  

Yáng Shuāng-zǐ is a Taiwanese writer. Taiwan Travelogue is her first book to be translated into English. As well as the International Booker Prize 2026, the novel won the National Book Award for Literature in Translation in 2024 and Asia Society’s inaugural Baifang Schell Book Prize. It has been published or is forthcoming in numerous languages including Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Ukrainian, Italian, German, Dutch, Danish, and Greek.

Lin King is a Taiwanese and American writer and translator based in Taipei and New York. She has received the PEN/Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Her translations include the graphic novel series The Boy from Clearwater by Yu Pei-Yun and Zhou Jian-Xin, as well as Taiwan Travelogue. Her debut novel, Weeb, is forthcoming from Holt.

Josh Stenberg is an Associate Professor of Chinese at the University of Sydney and a literary translator of Chinese-language theatre, fiction, and poetry. Shortlisted for the the Medal for Excellence in Translation, the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards and the Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation, Stenberg also writes poetry and fiction.

The author said about the book

“Both Korea and Taiwan were once colonies of the Japanese Empire, but Koreans seem to feel uniformly resentful of that history, whereas Taiwanese people regard it with a much more conflicted mix of distaste and nostalgia. Using a contemporary Taiwanese lens, I wanted to untangle the complex circumstances that Taiwan’s people faced in the past, and to explore what kind of future we ought to strive toward”.

The translator said about the translation

“I worked very closely with my editor at Graywolf [the book’s US publisher], Yuka Igarashi, who trusted me to run wild with a complex mix of languages, notations, and footnotes. We took a maximalist approach, broke countless translation 'rules', and ended up with an experimental, multilayered work that we can be proud of”.

What the critics said

“In the end, Taiwan Travelogue is much more than a feast for foodies or a tale for armchair travelers. It’s a journey into the hearts of two unforgettable women who may or may not be able to reconcile friendship, perhaps even love, with the enormous gap in their social status and the vast cultural differences of their lives”, Lauren Yu-Ting Bo, Words Without Borders.

More from the Booker Prize Website