Taiwan Travelogue represents universal themes appealing to today’s readers. (Sponsored)

By Erin L. Cox, Publisher | @erinlcox

Earlier this year, the English-language edition of the novel Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King, made history in the United Kingdom by becoming the first book originally written in Mandarin to win the International Booker Prize. The novel, which is a fictional 1938 memoir of a Japanese novelist who visits Taiwan on a culinary tour and becomes entranced by a Taiwanese interpreter, is Yáng’ s first to be published in English.

What was even more impressive is that this wasn’t the first time the novel made history; in 2024, it was the first Taiwanese work to win the National Book Award in the United States.

Yáng is a Taiwanese writer of fiction, essays, manga and video game scripts, and literary criticism. Though she had great confidence in the novel, Yáng wasn’t sure how the book would do on the open market, “My initial hope for Taiwan Travelogue was simply that we might sell the Japanese rights. I was not one hundred percent sure that the translation rights would sell.”

Now, with the help of the Japanese translator Yuko Miura and English translator Lin King as champions of the book, Taiwan Travelogue has won international awards and been published or is forthcoming in 30 territories, including Germany on October 6^th.

For a novel to be this successful across markets, the themes and story must be universal. For Taiwan Travelogue, Yáng notes that readers in different countries are relating to the “power imbalances that run through our everyday lives.”

Yuka Igarashi acquired the book for Graywolf Press in the United States. Igarashi previously worked with translator Lin King and was interested in working with her again, but what drew her to the novel was, “Lin’s initial pitch [said] that Shuāng-zǐ ‘belongs to a younger generation of Taiwanese writers reimagining possibles of telling queer stories’ and that she believed the work ‘has the potential to revolutionize how Anglophone readers think about literature in translation,’ both of which were compelling to me.”

While Taiwan Travelogues is a fantastic novel which continues to sell rights and win awards around the world, it is also emblematic of Taiwanese literature, according to Yáng.

“Whether I was in the Chinese literature department or the Taiwan literature institute, every piece of writing I published was written in Mandarin. But I came to see with increasing clarity the differences between China and Taiwan in contemporary literary writing: the social concerns of the two countries, their structures of feeling, their literary aesthetics, their habits of language, and, more importantly, the degree of freedom in writing,” said Yáng.

“Winning the National Book Award for Translated Literature and then the International Booker Prize means, I think, at the very least that I am now able to say to readers across the Sinophone world: ‘Yes, Taiwan has a literature. Surprised? Come read it!’”

Karin Betz, who translated the book into German, agrees, “Nowadays, younger writers from Taiwan are using a more uniquely Taiwanese language and delve into stories that can’t be told in mainland China, at least not so easily, like same-sex-love, colonial history, the Taiwan-Mainland-relationship in its full complexity, and so on.”

With the book now out in Germany, Betz noted how she hoped German audiences might respond to the book.

“Despite its distinct cultural and linguistic aspects, its themes of love, power imbalances, foodie-fancies, tourism, and its humor are universal and easily accessible. As a German translator, the history of World War II, German war crimes and the German-Japanese alliance at that time were very much on my mind while translating Taiwan Travelogue. Many German readers won’t know much about Taiwan’s history and its colonial past and I hope they will learn a lot from that novel – in many entertaining and touching ways.”

Igarashi echoes Yáng’s Booker acceptance speech in noting how the novel helps readers not only understand history but also the present, “[Yáng] talked about how Taiwan’s people have endured multiple colonial regimes and have faced threats of invasion and asserted what literature can do ‘when confronted by geopolitical forces so much greater than our own.’ As she suggests, I think Taiwan’s rich history and literature are vital to our understanding of the world we’re all living in.”

When asked what she hopes readers around the world take away from the novel, Yáng said, “I hope readers will find the concerns we hold in common across borders: the intimacy between women, the subtle imbalances of power that already exist in this world, and the question of how, exactly, we are to keep telling our own stories as a relatively small country that sits alongside a cultural empire. And as a Taiwanese writer, I have a plain wish, which is that after reading the novel, readers will find themselves wanting to come and take a walk around Taiwan.”

The story of Taiwan Travelogue is part of a wider conversation about how Taiwan’s literature is reaching readers beyond its borders. That conversation will continue at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA), organizer of the Taiwan Pavilion (Hall 4.2 F69), will bring together literary voices from Taiwan in dialogue with international writers. Through its participation in major book fairs, TAICCA helps connect Taiwan’s publishing community with the wider world, facilitating rights exchange and fostering new international partnerships. The full Taiwan Pavilion program, including appearances by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and Karin Betz, is available here.