Taiwan Novel Prize Winners Target Screen Adaptation
Two authors received a combined $54,500 in cash prizes at a Taipei festival, with the top work focusing on four strangers posing as a family in a murder house.
By Simon Bennett ·
Iris Kong, a professional engineer, won the top prize at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest on November 8 for a suspense novel that prioritizes production feasibility over complex world-building. Her work, currently titled “The Stand-In Family,” won the Mirror Fiction Award’s Grand Prize of NT$1 million, which converts to approximately $32,000. The story follows four strangers who impersonate a family inside a residence where a murder has occurred. Under the watch of a property developer, one of the impostors is compelled to address a past error.
Kong stated that the award was a specific target when she developed the narrative. She noted that her previous works were too costly to adapt for the screen. Consequently, she constructed this story with a realistic setting and factored in production expenses from the initial stages of writing. The award is administered by Mirror Fiction, a Taiwanese literary IP developer and production company, which announced the fifth edition of its prize during the festival.
Malaysian writer Liang Xuan received the Judges’ Award, valued at NT$700,000 or roughly $22,500, for a provisional title called “Endless Rain.” Both winning authors are eligible for publication and screen adaptation development through Mirror Fiction. The competition received 529 submissions containing more than 40 million Chinese characters. The winners were selected through multiple rounds of judging.
Tung Cheng-yu, the CEO of Mirror Fiction, explained that the prize aims to introduce promising literary properties to potential investors. She argued that adapting a novel is more efficient than creating an original story because the source material already establishes the world. Tung cited audience figures to support this view, claiming that films adapted from books drew more than 40% higher attendance than original films. She stated that the difference for television content exceeded 60%, though she did not specify the source of these statistics during her presentation.
During the second half of the showcase, Mirror Fiction sales director Sharleen Liu introduced five literary projects for the company’s 2027 slate. The lineup includes “036037” by Kevin Chen, a contemporary romance about two middle-aged people revisiting a relationship from more than two decades ago. This novel has already secured a screen adaptation deal, and a four-volume print edition is scheduled for release in December.
Other projects on the slate include “The Midnight Masseuse: A Taipei Noir” by Tommy Tan, a crime thriller that begins with the murder of a female massage therapist and exposes connections among police, prosecutors, and politicians. Daniel Hsieh’s “Double Diplomacy” follows two brothers, one a diplomat and the other a criminal strategist, who exchange identities and become entangled in a diplomatic crisis involving organized crime.
The slate also features “Red-Haired Inibs” by Nakao Eki Pacidal, an Indigenous writer and historian. The novel follows a girl of mixed Indigenous and Dutch ancestry in 17th-century Taiwan. Her search for her father leads to an exploration of the lives of people omitted from official historical accounts. The lineup concludes with Kong’s “The Stand-In Family.” Mirror Fiction has expanded into film and television investment, with credits that include the Netflix series “The Victims’ Game” and the Oscar submission “The Falls.”
