The Taipei International Book Exhibition has unveiled its book prize winners for 2021. The honor has gone to 13 authors from Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong.
At a press conference last week, organizers of the 2021 Taipei International Book Exhibition announced the winners of next year’s book prize. The prize is divided into four categories: fiction, non-fiction, children and youth, and compilation.
Well-known Taiwanese novelist Huang Chun-ming was given one of the awards for his novel about a girl who loves smiling.
The 87-year-old author said this award shows that the years he spent writing the work were worthwhile.
Chinese writer Su Xiaokang, meanwhile, won a prize for a book that chronicles China from 1989 to 2019. The self-exiled dissident moved to the United States in June 1989 because of his involvement in the Tiananmen Square protests.
Su thanked Taiwan for giving him the space to publish his works. He said that over the past 30 years, he has published a number of books in Taiwan, a place he called his only “literature homeland”. Su said that Taiwan allows the free publication of books in Mandarin Chinese because it is a free country, without political shackles.
Next year’s book fair will open on January 26 and will run for six days.