Yang Shuang-ziWinner of the International Booker Prize 2026"Literature cannot fundamentally detach itself from politics," said Taiwanese author Yang Shuang-zi at the award ceremony at the Tate Modern in London, where she received this year's International Booker Prize.She received the renowned literary award for the English translation of her novel "Taiwan Travelogue." The novel is set in occupied Taiwan in the 1930s and tells the love story between a Japanese author and her Taiwanese translator, who travel through the country together. In poetic and artful language, Yang Shuang-zi describes, at first glance, a romantic journey through the country then occupied by Japan, where the two women enjoyably explore the beauty and culinary diversity of the land. Only on closer inspection does the author's literary sophistication become apparent: it is the constraints of unequal power relations and colonialism that ultimately separate the lovers and keep them at a distance. Politics intrudes into the most private sphere. What does it truly mean to try foreign food, and what happens to a relationship when the external dynamics of power relations subtly infiltrate the conversations of the two women?The novel, disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese author, brings to light a long-neglected chapter of East Asian history and was a sensational success in Taiwan.Yang Shuang-zi (*1984) is a novelist, essayist, and literary critic. "Yang Shuang-zi" is her pseudonym and means "twins." It refers to her deceased twin sister, with whom she originally shared it.