The 2026 International Booker Prize-winning Taiwan Travelogue does the last thing expected of an independently published darling of postcolonial literature—it gets its readers to smile. The first Mandarin language novel to win the prestigious prize was born out of an epicurean approach to research that allowed its author to step into her protagonists’ shoes. “Research for the novel’s central themes of travel and food changed my life in two obvious ways: my savings went down; my weight went up,” revealed novelist Yáng Shuāng-zǐ in an interview with the Booker Prize Committee.
Life’s infinitesimal pleasures are precisely what uplift this celebrated novel. “I personally dislike historical fiction that is strictly miserable,” Taiwan Travelogue’s translator Lin King reflected in the same interview. “These stories ring to me as untrue, because no matter how difficult times are, I believe that humans always manage to find flickers of levity and deep wells of love.” In the award-winning English adaptation, King and Yáng’s sensibilities fuse into a voice that radiates with the small and sundry joys of moving through the world—that little feeling of triumph after nailing a last-minute trip, the hitched breath that escapes when sightseeing something truly magnificent, and especially the satiation that follows the great Taiwanese pastime of eating full and well.
It’s these unexpectedly fun observations that act as clever shelter for the novel’s ambitious narrative. The book is framed as the found travelogue of fictional novelist Aoyama Chizuko as she and her assigned companion-interpreter O Chizuru trek their way through a Japanese-occupied Taiwan just before the countries are cleaved in two by the Second World War. Questions of imperial power and cultural survival are volleyed between noodle slurps, sunflower seed crunches, and savored bites of high-altitude wasabi imbued with the rare air of the mountain it was grown on. Whether Taiwan Travelogue compels the foodie in you to explore thanks to the many scenes of feasting seasoned throughout the novel, or your inner detective is made eager to untangle its nested historical plots, the novel is full of entry points into early 20th century Taiwan, then a satellite to the Japanese empire. In other words, the book does what any great travel story is supposed to—it strips back our preconceptions of people and places and taps into a universally human sense of curiosity.
As history-making as the novel’s International Booker Prize win is, Taiwan Travelogue belongs to a long line of Taiwanese literary heritage. As a Taiwanese-American myself, these are the stories I return to time and time again to dive into the island’s rich cultural layers, celebrate its thrill-seeking travelers, and of course, relish in its great love affair with food. Below, five books to dive into once you’ve finished Yáng and King’s stunning travelogue-within-a-novel.
Prior to the publication of Yáng and King’s novel, the words “Taiwan travelogue” used to first conjure the image of free-spirited Taiwanese travel writer Sanmao. Stories of the Sahara, her most famous collection of dispatches from her time living in Western Sahara between 1974 and 1979 was translated into English by Mike Fu in 2020. If there was anyone who knew where to find a laugh in dark and fraught times, it was her, and this grouping of essays is Sanmao at her sharpest. (Read more on my own relationship with the essay collection here.)
Ghost Town by Kevin Chen, translated by Darryl Sterk
It’s your family that haunts you in the end—a conclusion you could come to by way of Freudian analysis or plodding along with this engrossing multigenerational saga. We follow the protagonist Keith, a young gay Taiwanese man who returns to his run-down hometown of Yongjing after murdering his boyfriend in Berlin. As someone whose own family hometown is about an hour’s drive from Yongjing, I can confirm no other English language novel captures the general ambience of a Middle Taiwanese small-town quite so accurately—down to the hacked up betel nut cud on the streets and gloopy mounds of bah-uân served from every other street stall.
Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin, translated by Bonnie Huie
This seminal work of lesbian literature is the origin of the terms “crocodile” and “Lazi,” which Taiwan’s sapphic community has claimed as their own terms. The former word is a running metaphor throughout the book, which describes how same-sex attraction is forced under the surface in heteronormative society. Taking place in late 1980s, post-White Terror (the second longest period of martial law in the world) Taiwan, Notes of a Crocodile reads as a series of notebooks, most of which come from a college student named Lazi in Taipei whose sexual awakening is denied the conventional outlets and marriage plot afforded to most literary ingenues. While less gustatory in its delights than Taiwan Travelogue, Qiu Miaojin’s magnum opus takes pleasure as a politically significant act.
The Man With the Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-yi, translated by Darryl Sterk
A grieving professor and teenager from an uncontacted Indigenous community from the fictional Pacific island of Wayo Wayo are brought together when a trash vortex, a destructive man-made island of garbage coalesced by ocean currents, changes life on the island forever. An ecological tragedy that stares unflinchingly at climate change’s unrelenting march, this devastating novel floats on its sense of humanity and our instinct to live for our loved ones.
The Boy From Clearwater: Book 1 by Yu Pei-Yun, Illustrated by Zhou Jian-Xin, Translated by Lin King
The Kuomintang, otherwise known as the Chinese Nationalist Party, arrested Tsai Kun-lin in 1950 for his affiliation with a “left-leaning” reading group in high school. From his time as a prisoner in a labor camp on Green Island to the island’s transition to a full democracy, Tsai beared close witness to Taiwan’s modern metamorphosis, and The Boy From Clearwater is a gorgeously illustrated graphic biography that brings his tale to life. Another Lin King translation—the first two volumes were published in 2023 and 2024—this ongoing four book series traces the arc from the island’s most intense period of oppression to its trend towards reform.
