Taiwan Travelogue

Author Yáng Shuāng-zǐ disguised Taiwan Travelogue as a translation of a lost Japanese text. Lin King has then translated the Taiwanese Mandarin original into English. The main characters in the book are a novelist and an aspiring translator. How did these multiple layers affect your experience as a reader? Did you enjoy the conceit?

The novel is unusual in that it has footnotes throughout, written by both Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and Lin King. These notes provide extra detail and context. What did you think of them? Were they illuminating or did they feel like an interruption?

Food is at the heart of Taiwan Travelogue – acquiring and preparing it, as well as eating it – and Aoyoma-san and Chi-chan grow closer over numerous shared meals. Aoyoma-san is famous for her ‘monstrous appetite’ and Chi-chan is adept at keeping her satiated. Did you enjoy the food writing? In what ways is food connected to identity in the novel, both personal and national?

Aoyoma-san says early on that, ‘Travel is living in a foreign place’ and ‘experiencing all four seasons of normal life’ there. She finds a house and settles in, charting her exploits over summer, autumn, winter and spring. What do you think of Aoyoma-san’s definition of travel? And how do the changing seasons affect the atmosphere of the book?

Aoyoma-san says she will never marry and that her goal is to spend her whole life writing. She doesn’t understand why Chi-chan is willing to accept her fate and be married off by her family. Considering the 1930s time period and the difference in status between the two women, are Aoyoma-san’s expectations realistic? Is it fair of her to chastise Chi-chan about these things in the way that she does?

Towards the end of the novel, Mishima talks frankly to Aoyoma about what he believes is her ‘intellectual arrogance’, explaining to her that ‘the way you talk about the Island’s flavors does not sound to me like you are appreciating them for being delicious but more for being exotic, as one might appreciate a rare animal’. It’s an important wake-up call for Aoyama. What did you think of this exchange between Mishima and Aoyoma? Was it in any way a wake-up call for you as a reader, too?

Shahnaz Habib in The New York Times Book Review described Taiwan Travelogue as a ‘delightfully slippery novel about how power shapes relationships, and what travel reveals and conceals’. How does the power imbalance between the two women affect their relationship? Do you think it would ever be possible for them to escape their employer/employee and mainlander/islander dynamics to become true friends?

In an introduction at the very beginning of the book, the fictional translator Hiyoshi Sagako writes, ‘when reading this book, please remain cognizant of Aoyoma Chizuko’s status as one of the colonisers within the story’. What do you think the translator means by this and did it have an impact on how you read the novel?

The International Booker Prize 2026 judges said, ‘Taiwan Travelogue pulls off an incredible double act: it succeeds as both a delicious romance and an incisive postcolonial novel.’ Do you agree? What does the novel reveal about colonialisation?

In an Interview with the Booker Prizes, translator Lin King said she ‘took a maximalist approach, broke countless translation “rules”, and ended up with an experimental, multilayered work’. Do you think King’s approach works, and were you conscious that rules were being broken? How does this book compare to other translated fiction you have read?