Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-zi, translated by Lin King (International Booker Prize 2026)

Reading anything after The Remembered Soldier was bound to be a disappointment, and as such this is the spirit with which I opened Taiwan Travelogue. I’m not terribly interested in Taiwan, any more than any other country, and yet, every once in a while I came across a quote which struck my jaded point of view.

Consider this passion to record one’s thoughts, so similar to my own:

“What drove me to write was neither a political agenda nor money, but a simple desire to record my observations whenever I saw or heard anything interesting, or whenever I felt moved to reflect on something…Over time, piles of notebooks and scraps covered my desktop and drawers, and slowly consumed the study’s bookshelves, windowsills, and floors.” p. 73

Thus speaks Aoyama, a young novelist who has traveled to Taiwan to document the country. She has been given a translator, named Chizuro, to accompany her. It is through their eyes that we glimpse Taiwan when it was a colony of Japan. Many of our glimpses depict food. It seems, in fact, that most of the novel is about the food they consumed, for Aoyama is passionate about it.

“My gluttony isn’t limited to exquisite or expensive foods, either-whenever I start craving something, anything, my stomach burns with this insatiable greed until I get my hands in whatever it is. That’s the monster in me.” p. 83

I would say that the monster within her concerns more than food. The homosexual undercurrent in this novel begins in a fairly subtle way, and then becomes more and more pronounced. I am not interested in reading about lesbian mentality, especially when the writing itself is not very good. There is no subtle nuance, there is no real plot, nor, to me, much of a redeeming point in Taiwan Travelogue. Ultimately, it both bored, and disappointed, me. 

Read it, if you want to read endless descriptions of food, on every page, along with Aoyama’s ever growing attraction to her translator. How it won the National Book Award, let alone a place on the International Booker Prize long list, is beyond me.