Taiwanese author Yang Shuang-zi’s novel Taiwan Travelogue (臺灣漫遊錄) has resonated deeply with Indian readers since its release there last month, with many thinking its portrayal of identity under Japanese rule reflects their own colonial experience, Indian publishers said.
For many Indian readers, Yang’s book has offered a rare window into Taiwan — a place seldom featured in India’s cultural imagination, said publishing professionals who attended her book talk in New Delhi on Nov. 6.
“This book is a great introduction to Taiwan — the food, the culture, the history,” Divyanshi Dash said.
Photo: CNA
Set a century ago, the novel traces daily life and self-discovery under colonial rule.
“There are a lot of things that are different from the present Taiwan, but reading about Taiwan’s history has made me more interested in its present as well,” Dash said.
Editor and journalist Swati Daftuar said the book’s strength lies in how it allows Indian readers to view colonialism through a perspective beyond their own.
The book has “become a bridge” between Taiwan and India, she said, revealing how colonial structures seep into everyday life — from writing and food to travel.
Just as Japanese-era soups became part of Taiwan’s culinary identity, India’s enduring use of tea and sugar shows how colonial imports have woven themselves into local culture, she said.
Yang said such reflections are exactly what she hoped her work would evoke.
Colonial history is the heart of her novel, though wrapped in layers of storytelling, she said at the event, adding that she wanted to depict the complex emotions Taiwanese people still feel toward Japan.
Facing that history means acknowledging contradiction, and people cannot just embrace the parts they like and ignore the rest, she said.
“We need to recognize the wounds and the power structures that shaped who we are,” she added.
Yang also found the Taiwan-India parallels deeply meaningful, citing extensive railway systems built during their colonial periods by Japanese and British respectively.
Those railways connected people across regions, helping them feel, perhaps for the first time, that they belonged to the same land, she said.
“Despite differences in ethnicity, language or lifestyle, people began to recognize each other as part of the same nation,” she added.
Taiwan Travelogue won last year’s US National Book Award for Translated Literature — becoming the first Taiwanese work to do so.
In related news, Lin King (金翎), the English translator of Taiwan Travelogue, and the novel’s editor, Yuka Igarashi, have won a translation prize from the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA).
The association on Thursday announced this year’s ALTA First Translation Prize winners at an awards ceremony as part of its annual conference held in Tucson, Arizona.
As the translator, “King navigates the novel’s shifting linguistic and historical registers with precision and flair, preserving its layered complexity while bringing its sensuous prose and intellectual play into English,” ALTA said. “This is a rare and remarkable act of translation, one that reflects upon itself as a translation.”
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