The International Booker Prize Winner 2026

Hello Gentle Reader,

This years International Booker Prize Winner is Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and translator Lin King for the historical metafictional novel “Taiwan Travelogue.” This is the first time a book written in Mandarin has won the International Booker Prize.

This year’s shortlist was an interesting group. Marie NDiaye and Daniel Kehlmann were the two most renowned and recognizable writers of this year’s shortlist with their novels “The Witch,” and “The Director.” Kehlmann was considered the front runner for this years award as well; while Rene Karabash’s novel “She Who Remains,” was viewed as the literary dark horse, for its unapologetic fragmented and poetic narrative; while the brutal and beautiful exploration of the dark complexities of the human soul in “On Earth As It Is Beneath,” by the Brazilian Ana Paula Maia, was rightfully noted by John Self in The Guardian to be an eccentric but absolutely deserving winner.

Still, regardless of what itineration the Booker Prize takes, it delights to defying expectations when it can. John Self in his article for The Guardian noted that only two works on this year’s shortlist were stylistically divergent or non-linear, the aforementioned “She Who Remains,” and the winner “Taiwan Travelogue.” Of the two, however, according to Self, “Taiwan Travelogue,” was more approachable in form, and as such charming in its deviating structure. The novel was in turned praised by the judges for its inventive dressing, concealing and orbiting around the romantic core of the novel, while also providing pointed historical evaluations and critiques of colonialism and Japan’s imperial past, while grappling with the complex relationship Taiwan has with this past, which does not easily define itself into resentment as in the case of Korea, another former colony; but instead exists within a clouded lens of nostalgia and revulsion.

Regardless, “Taiwan Travelogue,” is by far one of the more playful novels to have won the International Booker Prize.

Congratulations to Yáng Shuāng-zǐ.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

For Further Reading

John Self, The Guardian: “What should win this year’s International Booker?”

Trysting

Hello Gentle Reader,

It is difficult to imagine any subject that has been discussed, contemplated, adored, celebrated, inspired by, decried, raged against and written about, then love. Love is one of those eternal subjects. It is a subject as universal as death. A product of the human condition. Operating as both seductor and tormentor. How many poets have waxed and waned over the subject and its fickle nature. Each of them vexed, provoked, infatuated with it. Desire sweet as sick. The very same which occupies your waking attention, clouds your vision, haunts your dreams. A never-ending swirling intoxicating state. The lilting tune in your ears. The palpation in your chest. The quickened pace of your heart beat. The flush on your cheeks and skin. The way it leaves you breathless and dare you admit, wanting? Eros is a tempestuous state. Imperious as it is impulsive. One untethered and unencumbered. It has the uncanny talent and ability of stripping away inhibitions. Afterall, when it comes to love, everyone is punch drunk. Just look at Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of beauty, love and passion; who was born of the seafoam produced by the castrated genitals of the primordial god Uranus, whose testicles having been cast into the sea by his own usurper son, the Titan King Cronus. The goddess and personification of beauty and love spawned from violence and male virility. Other versions propose the genesis of Aphrodite sprouted from drops of blood falling into the sea from Cronus’s sickle after castrating Uranus, whereby the primordial god’s essence mixed with the waves and water to manifest the seafoam facilitating the inception and formation of the seaborn goddess. At which point one could argue the world would never know peace again. Best not to forget the story and myth of the Trojan War. Regardless, to be in love—that is to be, just head over heels; completely flung off the deep end; freefalling into a state of ecstasy—is to be whisked away down a rose laden garden path. The cost of admission? Discrete kisses, either relinquished or stolen; or worst still, rational thought. Though, this describes the impassioned state of rabble-rousing infatuations. The very ones which cause a kaleidoscope of butterflies to unfurl and riot within the depths of your core. Alit and a flutter. What a dizzying state of giddiness. No surprise though. Eros the god of desire, is the cherubic son of Aphrodite and Ares the god of war (depending on which mythic lineage you subscribe to, others state the father is Zeus while others mention Hermes; never Hephaestus), which explains the volatility of the mischievous gods golden tipped arrows, and their turnabout erisian effects on those shot through with them. Mythically speaking, love is usually depicted with violent cause and effect circumstances. Golden apples; bow and arrows. In the end the city is sieged and burning.

What then of other loves? Where is the one with no proclamations or announcements. The one who refuses to engage in exclamation or exaggeration. Its tender and gentle. The kind everyone else notices before you do. The one, were you sigh all day. Not from exasperation, but the quiet understanding of a still unacknowledged and unarticulated longing. Then there is that wistfulness in your eyes. A glazed over look, distant, though not forlorn. Theres a dreaminess to it; a private thought occupying you. All the while, your completely absent and unaware of your daydreaming. Despite this, it is obvious to everyone else why you are sighing and who you are thinking of. This is quieter love. One tended and cultivated with care, blossoming slowly, with a natural ease. The eroticism, the obsession, the burning adoration, have been exquisitely extinguished. In their stead, is a yearning. Love threaded with a stitch of the melancholic. The pinch of absence keeps the home fires burning.

Though not all love is tinted with innocent blushes, scored with the soundtrack of sweet nothings. It’s not the sighs punctuating the day. Its not love at all, but is misappropriated and described as such. In reality it’s merely the mechanics of copulation. Isn’t that all an affair is, a bit of fun on the side? An intimate betrayal with no real successor. Guilt all around. For him with his unsatiable appetite and wanting someone else to tend to. The other woman (as she is now known) whose taken in by his flirtations, his empty promises, a few sad sob stories about the frigid unaffectionate wife. Then the wife, who swears she gave him the best years of her life, as if she were a used car, and has taken to sleeping in the box room for the past two years of their strained and struggling marriage. Yet, they continue on. After each row, when another plate is smashed against the wall or another dinner ruined by their increasingly bitter and resentful insults. They collide again, reminded of somehow at sometime, they once (at the very least), liked each other. Where then does this leave the other woman? Edward Hoppers painting “Eleven AM,” (1926) captures the isolation and quiet humiliation of this subject, at least when reimagined as a poem by Joyce Carol Oates. The subject of the painting, is a nude woman (though she does have her shoes on) sitting on an armchair gazing out an open window. The light carries the late morning maturity. The kind of light overlooked during the working day. It’s an hour and a lighting of an early lunch. Code for a brief dalliance. All the flirtations repeated on loop; all the promises reiterated: I’m so crazy about you; can’t get enough of you; I’ll leave her for you, just be patient. In the poetic reimagining, the subject reveals she’s been stood up the night before, and has been waiting all morning for the lying bastard. This isn’t love, its regret. A rendezvous with no substance, leaving lingering disappointment. What a perfect subject for a painting. The promise of love and the failure of deliverance. What is in short, the abject and sober regret after sex and the affair concluded. The lies we engage in to coddle ourselves and sustain the fantasy, however infinitesimal it is in becoming a reality. 

Loves complexities are rich and varied. While its fallout, its heartbreak, has been equal fuel for inspiration for centuries. In “Trysting,” Emmanuelle Pagano curates and cartographs the various facets and complexities of love as a subject. Both its universal experience but its deeply personally felt realities. From the eleven in the morning betrayals, to the strange ways we fall in love, all the way to the myriads of ways in which we fall out of love. Through it all Pagano explores the textures, colours, characteristics, personas and disguises love as emotion, response, and reality take shape.

“She puts her arms around me, talks to me, supports me with her words and her eyes. I cannot respond. So I lie to her. I need her in order to become the an I must become, but I’m not sure I love her.

This is much harder than I had expected. I often dream of stopping, but I see her smiling at me and I can’t think straight. I would like her to teach me not to lie anymore, but if I stop lying, I’ll no longer be able to tell her that I love her.”

Written in fragmented vignette’s, love may be the nucleus of “Trysting,” but the subject is anything but static. Emmanuelle Pagano chases, ensnares and encapsulates through the multiple voices and perspectives found in a fragment or a shard, the endless forms and possibilities of love. Be it juvenescent obsession; youthful rebellion in the orchard; the private pleasures of intimate embraces; the mundanity exalted to new heights by the whirlwind of companionship; the sudden sensation of being resurrected, rekindled and encouraged to live again; all of which is captured within beautiful turn of phrases, which continue to explore a literary sensuality when discussing the erotic, showcasing that an embracement of love or discussions of sex, does not denote something merely to sexualization or pornography:

“I wake up, and I can hear the sound of little creatures walking around on an invisible pile of cloth stretched tight next to my ear, stretched between me and him. Between me and him, just enough room for a cloth pulled taught like paper. I open my eyes and its nearly light. He’s scratching his stubble. The tiny sounds stop as he smiles at me. His hand leaves his face to touch mine.”

For good measure, however, “Trysting,” does not skip merrily through the rosy meadows of love without complication, or without consequence. Pagano turns to the complexities of love and their devastating aftermath with equal poeticism:

“It’s been a long time without her now. I’m starting to get used to the loneliness, the evenings, the little seven ‘o clock sadness.”

“Trysting,” often came across as reading the private intimate correspondence of anonymous people. It’s the discovery of ancient love letters, confessions and missives. Secret details tucked deep within their souls, never barred or let loose or revealed. It’s a beautiful book, which delights in the atomised nature of love. Its inability to be captured or distilled coherently in one unifying image or experience. Emmanuelle Pagano has provided a wonderful series of treatises on the eternal subject of love, which is often viewed as a treacle and sentimental subject or worst melodramatic and tiresome. Pagano has provided the cartography exploring how love is an attractive and binding force, while also being the very cause of our disconnect and severance from one another. “Trysting,” is not a remedy or tonic to sate or quell the concerns of a growing loneliness epidemic sweeping western society, but it is an enchanting piece of literature which celebrates the ties that bind and the ache of such absence.

“When she left me, I cried so much I became truly disgusting, full of phlegm. I began to wonder why tears are the only excretions we don’t find repulsive. Perhaps because they’re transparent—but then what about saliva or sweat? My tears come with snot, slobber, convulsive hiccups, and a torrent of ridiculous thoughts, stupid questions.”

While “Trysting,” is a short and beautifully written book, its atomised structure, lacking character or defined plot or story, can often mean the fragments and shards begin to blend into one another, and readers may find themselves skimming along, not quite taking in the beauty of the language or profundity of experience being remarked on. My advice when reading “Trysting,” dip in and read for short bursts and then walk away, it keeps the prose fresh and the subject engaging. While Gentle Reader, if I am to add my own slight confession, I’ve been a resident of singledom my entire life. Love and romance belonged to the more spirited and outgoing people; it would have taken a very special person to coax me out of my shell, let alone notice me. No regrets though. A life on ones own has its own merits, its own pleasures that are entrenched now. Yet after reading “Trysting,” there were times where the “what if’s,” were entertained. What is it like waking up with a man in bed? Who laying next to you, smiles when you open your eyes? It should be noted: when entertaining any speculative situation, you always imagine yourself significantly younger and beautiful, of course! What lovely flights of fantasy though, which were tempered with reminders of how many couples and marriages were in fact unhappy, but marching forward, somehow duty bound to go to hell with each other. Some take their vows seriously. Nonetheless, they were lovely little daydreams, punctuated with sighs.

 

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

Anna Hallberg Elected to the Swedish Academy

Hello Gentle Reader,

Anna Hallberg, has been elected to the Swedish Academy. Hallberg will take Chair No. 18, which was left vacant after the Finnish-Swedish poet Tua Forsström resigned from the Swedish Academy in 2024. Following in what could be described as a conventional tradition now, Anna Hallberg is primarily a poet, as were both the previous occupants of the chair: Tua Forsström and Katarina Frostenson; while one could additionally include Artur Lundkvist in this tradition, Lundkvist is perhaps better recognised now his political positions and Soviet apologist attitudes then his poetry.

Anna Hallberg’s current poetry collection “AN,” is nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize.

Anna Hallberg will officially be instituted into the Swedish Academy during academy’s general meeting on December 20 2026.

 

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

Carol Rumens Dies Aged 81

Hello Gentle Reader,

For readers of The Guardian, Carol Rumens column “Poem of the Week,” was an institution of the paper. The column itself provided thoughtful and engaging literary analysis. Rumens herself, carried her columns with assured authority, not because she was an academic or former poetry editor or an accomplished poet in her own right; but rather, because she was a great reader, admirer and lover of poetry. This appreciation allowed Rumens to approach poetry with a affection of the form itself; celebrating its technical brilliance; a poet’s unique style; the forms historical context, legacy and roots; while delighting in the playful use of language. In Carol Rumens hands, poetry (which for the unrehabilitated facilitates a Pavlovian response, whereby readers slouch in their seats, eyes glaze over, minds drifting away, as an academic lecture is unleashed from a professor or teacher, droning on about meter, rhythm, rhyming scheme, syllabic count and stanza organization), becomes a pleasure and a joy. Poets, who have gradually been reduced to the ironically neglected top shelf of ivory tower heights, descend and return, whereby they are read for pleasure; not requirement or assignment. Carol Rumens analyses, only enhanced the poem of the week. Rumens never pathologised or autopsied the poem; dissecting and vivisecting them to provide readers a taxonomical overview of how it operates and functions; nor did Rumens strip them back or down to their baseline components and parts. Rather than looking at poetry through a clinical lens, splayed out on a metal examination table, Rumens operates as a delighted and excited tour guide, who is never exhausted by the wonders or treasures she will impart from her research and contemplation. Rumens guided readers through the poem as if it were a cathedral or basilica or palace or castle, praising the architecture, the craftsmanship; revealing the hidden cadences and inherent lyricism; reflecting on the imagery and symbolism; before pausing to review the entire structure, and cherish just exactly what the writer had painstakingly worked at crafting. Carol Rumens revitalised poetry appreciation, by showcasing its inherent human qualities, its ability to capture the strobe of lightning. Those flashes and fleeting moments which springboard into queries and existential ponderings, grappling with the eternal question of what is the human condition, and what is it to be alive. Carol Rumens herself, was a poet of equal renown, and had written one novel (“Plato Park,”), three plays, while being an avid translator and editor of Elizabeth Bartlett’s poems. When it came to her own column, Carol Rumens reflected on it modestly, revealing the sincere pleasure in reading and writing about poetry; while confessing to owing a duty of care to fellow poets and their poems. Though, perhaps most importantly, Carol Rumens conveyed the real frustrations about the challenges poetry faces:

“I’m sick of hearing that too much poetry is written and published. No, too little poetry is taught and read. A poem isn’t usually a butterfly or a mobile phone. It deserves a longer life. I wish I wrote better about poems and poetry, but I know I should go on writing, any way, as best I can.”

In this regard, Carol Rumens was a remarkable guide for reading poetry. Her columns were erudite and informative, but never dry in their discourse. Reading Rumens column was more like chasing butterflies in the meadows, rather than observing the lepidoptera pinned to boards encased behind glass. Carol Rumens “Poem of the Week,” columns revealed and celebrated the soul, the heart, the breath and life of poetry.

Rest in Peace Carol Rumens, you will be missed.

 
Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

For Further Reading

The Guardian: "Carol Rumens, poet and the Guardian’s poem of the week columnist, dies aged 81,"

The Guardian: "Archive: Poem of the Week,"