Yang Shuang-zi (born 1984) is a Taiwanese novelist and scholar of popular literature and subculture. Her birth name is Yang Jo-tzu, and Yang Shuang-zi was originally a shared pen name with her twin sister, Yang Jo-hui; she continued writing under the name after her sister’s death. Her fiction draws on Taiwanese history, particularly the period of Japanese colonial rule, to examine relationships between women and inequalities shaped by language, class, and colonial power. “Taiwan Travelogue” received Taiwan’s Golden Tripod Award, while Lin King’s English translation won the 2024 National Book Award for Translated Literature and the 2026 International Booker Prize. Set in 1938, the novel follows Japanese writer Chizuko Aoyama and her Taiwanese interpreter, Chizuru, as they travel across Taiwan by train and sample regional cuisine, gradually revealing the affection between them and the unequal positions of colonizer and colonized.
