Following its success in winning the U.S. National Book Award for Translated Literature last year, the novel “Taiwan Travelogue (臺灣漫遊錄)” has been awarded the inaugural Baifang Schell Book Prize for Translated Literature by the Asia Society’s China Books Review.
The Baifang Schell Book Prize was established last year by Orville Schell, Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society, in honor of his late wife. The award includes a cash prize of US$10,000 (approximately NT$300,000).
Written by Yang Shuang-zi (楊双子) and translated into English by Lin King (金翎), “Taiwan Travelogue” was praised by the jury as “a masterful novel that combines sly literary conceit with the lush pleasures of food writing, upended by a deepening experience of colonialism and its effects on friendship and love. Yáng Shuāng-zǐ’s narrative gifts reveal layer after layer behind what appears to be a mere travelogue, while Lin King’s artful translation allows tension to swell beneath the surface.”
Honorable mentions were awarded to “Fang Si-chi’s First Love Paradise: A Novel (房思琪的初戀樂園)” by Lin Yi-han (林奕含), translated by Jenna Tang; and “Mourning a Breast (哀悼乳房)” by Xi Xi (西西), translated by Jennifer Feeley.
