'Taiwan Travelogue' rethinks history, colonialism, and identity

Copies of the novel Taiwan Travelogue , which received the International Booker Prize this year, are seen at a bookstore in Taipei on May 21, 2026. I-HWA CHENG/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The novel, Taiwan Travelogue , which explores a journey across the island of Taiwan when it was occupied by Japan has stirred up questions about the island's identity and Taiwan's relationships with both its former colonizer Japan, and China.

Written by Taiwanese author Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and translated into English by Lin King, the book won global acclaim after it took home the 2026 International Booker Prize for the best work of fiction translated into English.

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Set in the 1930s, the story follows a young Japanese writer, Aoyama Chizuko, as she travels across the island with her Taiwanese translator Ō Chizuru. Through the power imbalance between the two women, their budding romance, and interactions with Taiwanese and Japanese characters alike, the novel raises questions about how Taiwan views its colonial legacy.

In China, the book has been accused of contributing to what some see as Taiwan glossing over Japan's colonial-era atrocities.

NPR recently spoke with both author Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and translator Lin King about Taiwan, Japan's colonial era and the pressure from China, which claims Taiwan.

The following exchanges have been edited for length and clarity. Interviews with the author and translator were conducted separately.

Author Yáng Shuāng-zǐ outside her favorite restaurant in Taipei. Jan Camenzind Broomby/NPR hide caption

NPR: Taiwan's view of Japan is very different from Korea and China's, which were also colonized by Japan. Where does this difference come from?

Yáng Shuāng-zǐ: This paradoxical situation is why I wanted to write the novel. During Japan's colonial period, we experienced suffering and oppression, but that period was also an important part of Taiwan's modernization. So, people's emotions are complicated.

It's made even more complicated by the fact that after the war, Japan left and the Republic of China came and very quickly adopted the former colonizer's methods of ruling people. They basically accomplished what the Japanese colonial government had spent 50 years doing, for example, replacing the language. That created a big rupture, so in this context, it's understandable why some people in retrospect ended up thinking Japan wasn't so bad.

The reason that Korea and China both view Japan differently is that they didn't experience the Republic of China regime that followed.

NPR: Your book is accused by some Chinese audiences of romanticizing colonialism, or of being an example of colonial nostalgia literature. How do you respond?

Yáng: Clearly, they have not understood the book. I am completely criticizing colonialism. My criticism is this: even when a colonizer tries to treat the colonized equally, the conclusion is that they still cannot do it. It shows us that colonialism is pervasive, and that the colonial system is fundamentally bad. Even if this regime built many modern facilities on this land, none of that solves the fact that it deprived the people on the colonized land of their original rights.

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NPR: What is your own family background, and how does that influence your writing?

Yáng: When I was born, everyone around me was WaiShengRen [外省人, people or the descendants of people who moved from China to Taiwan as the Republic of China lost the Chinese civil war to the communists in 1949]. On the other hand, on both my father's side and mother's side, my ancestors all came to Taiwan from Fujian [on the Chinese mainland] around the 17th or 18th century. This upbringing shaped how I think about novel-writing and what I want to talk about when I ask what it means to be Taiwanese.

Some people think we can use ancestry to determine who is Taiwanese. I think that's dangerous. I hope everybody can identify with Taiwan not based on ancestry but instead based on our identification with this country and this land. No matter where you came from, how you came, whether you are a new resident or third generation, we are all Taiwanese.

NPR: What worries do you have about Taiwan's future?

Yáng: Of course, I worry about war; everybody does. But my biggest worry is that Taiwanese people will give up on our current way of life and the pursuit of democracy, equality, and freedom that lasted more than a century. Taiwan only had its first direct presidential election in 1996. We only gained the right to choose who governs us directly thirty years ago. Are we really going to give that up so quickly?

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When some people around us think that unification [with China] would be fine, that means giving up a pursuit that has lasted more than a hundred years. That's what worries me: we have the right to vote, but we use that right to bury our own freedoms.

Translator Lin King stands outside a former colonial-era prison in Taipei where anti-Japanese political prisoners were once held. Jan Camenzind Broomby/NPR hide caption

NPR: How do you see your role as a translator?

Lin King: Literary translation is very different from many other forms of translation; accuracy does not mean conveying exactly what takes place in every single sentence. In Taiwan, I think translators are not given a lot of leeway, but I was intellectually brought up by groups of translators who are very much in the camp of taking interpretive liberties, of trying to convey the world 'in spirit'. Obviously without drastically modifying anything but really getting your hands into the story.

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In this particular case, I'm trying to find what would be a plausible English rendition of something taking place in the 1930s. In this book, the translation was very involved. Not heavy-handed, but just really getting into the weeds of things, hence the footnotes.

Aerial view of Taipei 101 and the surrounding cityscape at sunset from Taipei Mountains in Taipei in Taiwan on Dec. 14, 2021. immy Beunardeau/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

NPR: To what extent is today's reflection on colonialism also a reflection of Taiwan's current geopolitical situation [with China]?

King: I think there's a realpolitik of relying on your friends and allies, and it just so happens that our closest allies at the moment are our former colonizers. We have to rely on these friends because there are greater threats at hand and because we have a need.

NPR: Do you see your own family history as a reflection of Taiwan's identity struggle?

King: [Unlike my parents,] for those from my generation and after, Taiwan has always been this bustling, loud democracy. We just think of ourselves as Taiwanese because that's all we've known. That's the reality a lot of our international allies don't understand or refuse to see.

There's a tendency to scold [Taiwan] when the U.S. or others feel Taiwan is being too outspoken and is risking angering China. We're not trying to provoke anyone, but it always seems to be the implication that by talking about itself, Taiwan is provoking China and it should stop."