Fri, May 29, 2026 page8

• Taiwan’s quiet literary masterstoke

  • By Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley 蔡明燁
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  Winning this year’s International Booker Prize has transformed Taiwan Travelogue (台灣漫遊錄) from an acclaimed literary work into a cultural moment for Taiwan itself.

  The novel had already made history in 2024 by becoming the first Taiwanese work to win the US National Book Award for Translated Literature, giving it considerable visibility in the English-speaking literary world even before the Booker recognition.

  Taiwanese literature has often remained internationally overshadowed — frequently folded into broader categories such as “Chinese-language literature” or interpreted primarily through geopolitics rather than through its own literary imagination. The recognition of Yang Shuang-zi’s (楊双子) novel therefore matters not simply because a Taiwanese book has won a prestigious global prize, but because it signals that Taiwan’s complex historical experiences and cultural sensibilities are entering world literature on their own terms.

  What surprised me most about reading Taiwan Travelogue was that it took me three attempts to truly enter the world of the novel. My first encounter with the English translation left me disoriented. The book carries an overwhelming Japanese flavor — in atmosphere, literary sensibility, manners and aesthetics — to the point that I found myself questioning its status as a “Taiwanese” novel.

  After finishing the first chapter, I stopped. On my second attempt, I struggled again. The novel seemed almost like a catalogue of colonial travel: railway journeys, cafes, regional dishes, local customs and ethnographic detail unfolding in exquisite precision, but with little emotional force. I admired the writing, yet it still felt distant.

  Only on the third reading did the novel begin to reveal itself. I realized that its focus on surfaces is precisely the point. The attention to food, etiquette, travel, language and cultural refinement is not decorative, but the mechanism through which the novel explores colonialism, desire, identity and power.

  What initially appears gentle and aesthetic becomes haunted by subtle tensions — translation, intimacy, hierarchy and historical memory. The novel’s emotional and political force emerges almost imperceptibly through atmosphere and imbalance rather than dramatic confrontation. In retrospect, my difficulty entering it feels meaningful rather than accidental.

  Taiwan Travelogue refuses to offer Taiwan as an easily consumable national narrative. Instead, it asks readers to inhabit the ambiguities of colonial modernity. Set during the Japanese colonial period, it follows a Japanese writer traveling through Taiwan with a Taiwanese female interpreter, yet the real subject is the unequal structures shaping how people see one another. Colonialism is portrayed less through overt violence than through everyday life: accents, literary taste, food culture, etiquette and the invisible hierarchies governing who speaks and who must translate themselves for others.

  The relationship between the Japanese and Taiwanese characters is never fully equal, even amid admiration or affection. Colonialism operates not only through domination, but also through seduction, aspiration, imitation and emotional dependency. Food, in particular, becomes a key site where desire and power intersect. Meals are described with extraordinary sensuality and precision. At first glance, these passages seem nostalgic or pleasurable.

  However, gradually, cuisine becomes political. Taiwan itself is transformed into something to be tasted, aestheticized, consumed and interpreted through the colonial gaze. Yet beneath the elegance lies quiet resistance: Taiwanese identity can never be fully absorbed into imperial narratives. Something always exceeds translation and possession. Language functions similarly throughout the novel.

  Translation constantly occurs between Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese and other cultural registers, yet genuine understanding remains elusive. Characters may speak fluently to one another while remaining emotionally and historically distant.

  Yang captures the fractured consciousness produced by colonial modernity: People learn to inhabit the language of power publicly while privately carrying memories and identities that resist articulation. In recent years, global literary culture has shown growing interest in stories of empire, hybridity, migration and historical memory.

  Taiwan Travelogue speaks powerfully to these concerns through a distinctly Taiwanese lens. Rather than presenting Taiwan through nationalist certainty, it portrays the nation as multilingual, hybrid and historically layered — shaped by encounters, translations and uneven histories.

  Its Booker victory carries significance beyond literature. Internationally, it expands visibility for Taiwanese writing at a moment when Taiwan’s global presence remains politically constrained. Symbolically, it shows Taiwan can enter global conversations not only through geopolitics or cross-strait tensions, but through cultural production.

  For Taiwanese readers, the novel’s success might encourage renewed confidence in local histories and literary traditions long marginalized within broader Sinophone frameworks. Yet what makes Taiwan Travelogue especially notable is its refusal to simplify history into moral slogans.

  Japanese characters are not reduced to colonial caricatures, nor Taiwanese characters to passive victims. Instead, the novel examines how empire reshapes everyone psychologically and emotionally, entangling shame, admiration, loneliness, ambition, desire and self-fashioning with colonial power.

  That complexity helps explain its international success. Rather than explaining Taiwan didactically, it invites readers to dwell in ambiguity, offering no easy catharsis or political resolution. Its beauty lies in its quietness. Perhaps that is why it took three attempts to appreciate it fully. By the end, the “travelogue” is not only a journey across colonial Taiwan, but through the unstable emotional landscapes of history itself.

  Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley is a research associate at SOAS University of London’s Centre for Taiwan Studies.
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Investors diversify from TSMC to other winners of AI boom

  • 2

    HSR malfunction causes delays, reduced service

  • 3

    Japan ‘mystery illness’ not new: CDC

  • 4

    Taiwan assessing recruiting from Eswatini: ministry

  • 5

    Taiwan, China coast guards argue in South China Sea