Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026
Winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Translated Literature
Winner of the 2024 Baifang Schell Book Prize for Outstanding Translated Literature from Chinese Language
Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, Taiwan Travelogue is a bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history and power.
Set in May 1938, the young novelist Aoyama Chizuko sails from Japan to Taiwan where her interpreter proffers tantalising glimpses of island life and helps her to taste as much of cuisine as her larger-than-life appetite can bear.
‘Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue is a nesting-doll narrative about colonial power in its many forms.’ Shahnaz Habib, New York Times Book Review
‘Within Yáng’s tough assessment of her well-meaning and fundamentally likable narrator lies a plea for introspection on the part of the powerful, and a reminder of what is at stake when that responsibility is neglected.’ Talya Zax, The Atlantic
‘Yáng offers rich reflections on colonialism and translation along with delightful depictions of Taiwanese delicacies.’ Publishers Weekly
‘A (fictional) Japanese writer explores the colourful and complex culinary, linguistic, and political dynamics that shaped life in 1930s Taiwan . . . A moving account of friendship in the shadow of the Japanese Southern Expansion policy.’ Kirkus Reviews
‘Yáng Shuāng-zǐ’s Taiwan Travelogue is a metafictional lesbian romance between a writer and an interpreter, styled as a rediscovered colonial-era novel in translation, complete with footnotes.’ New Statesman
‘This book, presented as a ‘lost’ novel by a Japanese writer invited to tour Taiwan in 1938, is many things at once: an interrogation of how Japanese Southern Expansion transformed Taiwan, an exploration of the complexities of translation (of language, of culture, of ontology) and a deceptively knotty queer love story. But what stands out most is its mouth-wateringly detailed descriptions of Taiwanese cuisine, which structure the book (each chapter is named for a different dish) and through which Yang deftly shines a light on food as a key site of colonial violence.’ Odhran O’Donoghue, Vittles
