Taiwan Travelogue
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Winner of the National Book Award for Translated Literature and the International Booker Prize, Taiwan Travelogue is a historical novel that explores food, memory, and colonialism through the story of a Japanese writer traveling across Taiwan in 1938. Invited by the colonial government to document the island, she instead becomes absorbed in its everyday life, and especially its cuisine, with the help of a young Taiwanese interpreter whose knowledge and companionship gradually transform the journey.
Each chapter takes its name from a Taiwanese dish, as meals, markets, and regional specialties become a way of exploring the island’s history and the unequal relationship between colonizer and colonized.
Presented as the translation of a long-forgotten Japanese memoir complete with fictional forewords, footnotes, and editorial commentary, the novel cleverly blurs the boundaries between history and invention while offering a richly imagined portrait of Taiwan’s culinary culture.
Paperback.
Published on November 12, 2024
