✪ Winner of 2024 National Book Award for Translated Literature
✪ Shortlisted for 2026 International Booker Prize
✪ 2021 Golden Tripod Awards

May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.

Soon a Taiwanese woman—who shares the characters of her name—is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and many meals shared, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is.

TAIWAN TRAVELOGUE is presented as Yang Shuang-Zi’s rediscovered translation of a 1954 Japanese text written by Aoyama Chizuko. Yang completes the illusion of “historical authenticity” with forewords and afterwords written by fictional scholars and characters. Through a lighthearted and gourmet approach, Yang unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships .