Booker Prize 2026: Taiwanese writer wins prize and surpasses Brazilian Ana Paula Maia

Ana Paula Maia, author of 'As on Earth as Under Earth'
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Taiwanese writer Yang Shuang-zi, with the novel "Taiwan Travelogue", won this Tuesday (19), in London, the International Booker Prize literary prize, which had among the finalists the Brazilian Ana Paula Maia.
The work of Yang Shuang-zi, aged 41, is the first book written in Mandarin to receive this award.
In "Taiwan Travelogue", a Japanese novelist takes a culinary journey through Taiwan, when the country was under Japanese occupation in the 1930s. She travels accompanied by a local interpreter, who shares her passion for food.
The book presents itself as a translation of rediscovered travel memories and explores themes such as colonialism, power and love.
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"The central themes of the novel, travel and food, have changed my life in two obvious ways. On the one hand, my savings decreased and, on the other, my weight increased", declared the author about "Taiwan Travelogue".
It is "a captivating book, with a subtle sophistication" that "works both as a love story and as an incisive post-colonial novel", said the president of the prize jury, Natasha Brown.
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Brazilian in the final
The International Booker Prize, which for ten years has awarded works translated into English, has so far had no winner in Portuguese or Spanish.
But the Brazilian Ana Paula Maia, from the city of Nova Iguaçu (RJ), was among the six finalists for the 2026 edition.
"Assim na terra como sob da terra", book by Ana Paula Maia
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Maia, 48 years old, was competing for the prize for "Assim na terra como sob da terra", translated into English by Canadian Padma Viswanathan, with the title "On Earth As It Is Beneath".
This novel, published in 2017, explores the last days of a Brazilian penal colony, an isolated place used to separate prisoners from society, where the director hunts inmates like animals.
The writer, author of seven novels, won the São Paulo Literature Prize for two consecutive years, with "Just on Earth as Under the Earth" (2018) and "Bury Your Dead" (2019).
In addition to Maia and Yang Shuang-zi, the other four finalists were Frenchwoman Marie NDiaye, the Bulgarian Rene Karabash and Germans Shida Bazyar and Daniel Kehlmann.
The jury evaluated a first selection of 128 works, presented by publishers and published in the United Kingdom between May 1, 2025 and April 30, 2026.
Among the winners of the International Booker Prize are South Korean Han Kang, French Annie Ernaux and Polish Olga Tokarczuk, all winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Source: G1