Copies of the novel Taiwan Travelogue, which acquired the Worldwide Booker Prize this yr, are seen at a bookstore in Taipei on Might 21, 2026.
I-HWA CHENG/AFP through Getty Photographs
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I-HWA CHENG/AFP through Getty Photographs
TAIPEI, Taiwan — The novel, Taiwan Travelogue, which explores a journey throughout the island of Taiwan when it was occupied by Japan has stirred up questions concerning the island’s id and Taiwan’s relationships with each its former colonizer Japan, and China.
Written by Taiwanese writer Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and translated into English by Lin King, the e book gained international acclaim after it took residence the 2026 Worldwide Booker Prize for the very best work of fiction translated into English.
Set within the Thirties, the story follows a younger Japanese author, Aoyama Chizuko, as she travels throughout the island together with her Taiwanese translator Ō Chizuru. By the ability imbalance between the 2 ladies, their budding romance, and interactions with Taiwanese and Japanese characters alike, the novel raises questions on how Taiwan views its colonial legacy.
In China, the e book has been accused of contributing to what some see as Taiwan glossing over Japan’s colonial-era atrocities.
NPR just lately spoke with each writer Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and translator Lin King about Taiwan, Japan’s colonial period and the strain from China, which claims Taiwan.
The next exchanges have been edited for size and readability. Interviews with the writer and translator have been carried out individually.
Interview with Yáng Shuāng-zǐ:
Creator Yáng Shuāng-zǐ outdoors her favourite restaurant in Taipei.
Jan Camenzind Broomby/NPR
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Jan Camenzind Broomby/NPR
NPR: Taiwan’s view of Japan may be very completely different from Korea and China’s, which have been additionally colonized by Japan. The place does this distinction come from?
Yáng Shuāng-zǐ: This paradoxical state of affairs is why I wished to write down the novel. Throughout Japan’s colonial interval, we skilled struggling and oppression, however that interval was additionally an necessary a part of Taiwan’s modernization. So, individuals’s feelings are sophisticated.
It is made much more sophisticated by the truth that after the battle, Japan left and the Republic of China got here and really shortly adopted the previous colonizer’s strategies of ruling individuals. They mainly achieved what the Japanese colonial authorities had spent 50 years doing, for instance, changing the language. That created an enormous rupture, so on this context, it is comprehensible why some individuals on reflection ended up considering Japan wasn’t so unhealthy.
The rationale that Korea and China each view Japan in a different way is that they did not expertise the Republic of China regime that adopted.
NPR: Your e book is accused by some Chinese language audiences of romanticizing colonialism, or of being an instance of colonial nostalgia literature. How do you reply?
Yáng: Clearly, they haven’t understood the e book. I’m utterly criticizing colonialism. My criticism is that this: even when a colonizer tries to deal with the colonized equally, the conclusion is that they nonetheless can not do it. It reveals us that colonialism is pervasive, and that the colonial system is essentially unhealthy. Even when this regime constructed many trendy amenities on this land, none of that solves the truth that it disadvantaged the individuals on the colonized land of their authentic rights.
NPR: What’s your individual household background, and the way does that affect your writing?
Yáng: Once I was born, everybody round 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]. However, on each my father’s aspect and mom’s aspect, my ancestors all got here to Taiwan from Fujian [on the Chinese mainland] across the seventeenth or 18th century. This upbringing formed how I take into consideration novel-writing and what I wish to discuss after I ask what it means to be Taiwanese.
Some individuals assume we are able to use ancestry to find out who’s Taiwanese. I believe that is harmful. I hope everyone can determine with Taiwan not based mostly on ancestry however as a substitute based mostly on our identification with this nation and this land. Irrespective of the place you got here from, the way you got here, whether or not you’re a new resident or third era, we’re all Taiwanese.
NPR: What worries do you’ve about Taiwan’s future?
Yáng: In fact, I fear about battle; everyone does. However my greatest fear is that Taiwanese individuals will quit on our present lifestyle and the pursuit of democracy, equality, and freedom that lasted greater than a century. Taiwan solely had its first direct presidential election in 1996. We solely gained the suitable to decide on who governs us instantly thirty years in the past. Are we actually going to offer that up so shortly?
When some individuals round us assume that unification [with China] could be positive, meaning giving up a pursuit that has lasted greater than 100 years. That is what worries me: now we have the suitable to vote, however we use that proper to bury our personal freedoms.
Interview with Lin King:
Translator Lin King stands outdoors a former colonial-era jail in Taipei the place anti-Japanese political prisoners have been as soon as held.
Jan Camenzind Broomby/NPR
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Jan Camenzind Broomby/NPR
NPR: How do you see your position as a translator?
Lin King: Literary translation may be very completely different from many different types of translation; accuracy doesn’t imply conveying precisely what takes place in each single sentence. In Taiwan, I believe translators should not given lots of leeway, however I used to be intellectually introduced up by teams of translators who’re very a lot within the camp of taking interpretive liberties, of making an attempt to convey the world ‘in spirit’. Clearly with out drastically modifying something however actually getting your fingers into the story.
On this specific case, I am looking for what could be a believable English rendition of one thing happening within the Thirties. On this e book, the interpretation was very concerned. Not heavy-handed, however simply actually moving into the weeds of issues, therefore the footnotes.
Aerial view of Taipei 101 and the encompassing cityscape at sundown from Taipei Mountains in Taipei in Taiwan on Dec. 14, 2021.
immy Beunardeau/Hans Lucas/AFP through Getty Photographs
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immy Beunardeau/Hans Lucas/AFP through Getty Photographs
NPR: To what extent is right this moment’s reflection on colonialism additionally a mirrored image of Taiwan’s present geopolitical state of affairs [with China]?
King: I believe there is a realpolitik of relying in your mates and allies, and it simply so occurs that our closest allies for the time being are our former colonizers. Now we have to depend on these mates as a result of there are higher threats at hand and since now we have a necessity.
NPR: Do you see your individual household historical past as a mirrored image of Taiwan’s id wrestle?
King: [Unlike my parents,] for these from my era and after, Taiwan has all the time been this bustling, loud democracy. We simply consider ourselves as Taiwanese as a result of that is all we have identified. That is the truth lots of our worldwide allies do not perceive or refuse to see.
There is a tendency to scold [Taiwan] when the U.S. or others really feel Taiwan is being too outspoken and is risking angering China. We’re not making an attempt to impress anybody, but it surely all the time appears to be the implication that by speaking about itself, Taiwan is frightening China and it ought to cease.”
