Booker-Winning Novel 'Taiwan Travelogue' Sparks Debate on Colonial History

Yang Shuang-zi's novel 'Taiwan Travelogue,' winner of the Booker Prize, has ignited a cultural reckoning in Taiwan and drawn criticism in China. Set in 1938, the book follows a fictional Japanese writer, Aoyama, touring Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule, with each chapter named after a local dish. Yang stated she wrote the book to tell Taiwanese people they do not understand their own land's history. The novel explores Taiwan's complex identity under Japanese occupation (1895–1945), which ended when the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek took control after WWII. Chiang's martial law lasted 38 years, leading many Taiwanese to retrospectively view Japan more positively, despite colonial atrocities including killings and imprisonments. Translator Lin King noted that contemporary geopolitics—with China claiming Taiwan and Japan emerging as a key ally alongside the U.S.—also shapes perceptions. In China, the book has been criticized for downplaying Japan's colonial brutality, but Yang refutes this, asserting she completely criticizes colonialism and that modern facilities built by the regime do not justify depriving colonized people of their rights. The novel's exploration of food, including the national dish of braised-pork rice, symbolizes Taiwan's mixed Taiwanese, Japanese, and Chinese influences. The story was reported by Jan Camenzind Broomby for NPR from Taipei.