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The 2026 International Booker Prize Winner and Our Favorites From the Shortlist

🏆 Just Announced

The 2026 International Booker Prize

The 2026 International Booker Prize was awarded on May 19th at the Tate Modern in London — and the winner made history. Below, we're spotlighting the winner alongside our staff's favorite picks from the five shortlisted titles that didn't take home the prize but absolutely deserve your attention.

🏆 Winner

International Booker Prize 2026

Taiwan Travelogue cover
Historical Fiction🏆 Winner — First Taiwanese Book to Win

Taiwan Travelogue

by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ

Translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King

Set in 1930s Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule, the novel follows a popular Japanese pulp fiction writer on a government-sponsored culinary tour of the island, accompanied by a local interpreter who shares her love of food. What begins as a travelogue becomes a slyly layered examination of colonialism, queer love, and the power of storytelling itself — framed as a newly translated historical memoir, with all the pleasures and complications that entails.

"A good book can briefly steal your soul, replacing it with its own." — The Atlantic

Our Staff Favorites From the Shortlist

Five Books That Nearly Won

The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran cover
Literary FictionIran / Germany

The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran

by Shida Bazyar

Translated from German by Ruth Martin

A polyphonic novel following one Iranian family across four decades — through revolution, exile, and the dream of freedom that refuses to die. Told from multiple perspectives as the family flees Iran for Germany and back again, it is a quietly beautiful and deeply human exploration of what it means to lose a homeland and keep hoping anyway.

"Timely, tender, political and wonderfully human." — International Booker Judges

She Who Remains cover
Literary FictionAlbanian Alps

She Who Remains

Translated from Albanian

A teenager in a strict patriarchal community in the Albanian Alps escapes an arranged marriage by becoming a sworn virgin — renouncing her womanhood to live as a man. What follows is a fable-like chain of tragedy, revenge, and self-discovery set against a landscape so vivid it becomes its own character.

"An exquisitely written, brilliantly observed story." — International Booker Judges

The Director cover
Historical FictionNazi-Era Europe

The Director

by Daniel Kehlmann

Translated from German

Real-life filmmaker G.W. Pabst returns from Hollywood to his homeland in the late 1930s and is forced to make films under the Nazi regime. A darkly comic and morally devastating examination of artistic ambition versus moral compromise, written with the audacity and glittering unease of a modern fairytale.

"Kehlmann's best work yet." — The Guardian

On Earth As It Is Beneath cover
Literary FictionBrazil

On Earth As It Is Beneath

by Geovani Martins

Translated from Portuguese

In just over 100 pages, this novella plunges readers inside a remote Brazilian penal colony built on land where enslaved people were once tortured and murdered. Spare, unflinching, and relentless — where the boundaries between justice and cruelty have long since collapsed — balanced by prose of startling beauty.

"A must read for those who like their poetry written in blood." — New York Times

The Witch cover
Literary FictionSuburban France

The Witch

by Marie NDiaye

Translated from French by Jordan Stump

An unremarkable woman stuck in an unhappy marriage in an ordinary French town passes her supernatural gifts to her twin daughters — but finds their powers far exceed her own. A darkly comic and beautifully crafted novel about motherhood, magic, and what happens when daughters outgrow what their mothers gave them.

"NDiaye at her disquieting best." — Vulture

The International Booker Prize celebrates the best fiction translated into English — and this year's shortlist is a reminder of how much extraordinary writing exists beyond the English-speaking world. Any one of these six books is worth your time.

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