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Taiwan Travelogue

A Novel

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Taiwan Travelogue

By: Yang Shuang-Zi, Lin King - translator
Narrated by: Sarah Skaer
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About this listen

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 its authentic cuisine.

Soon a Taiwanese woman—who is younger than she is, and who shares the characters of her name—is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. Chizuru arranges Chizuko's travels and proves to be an exceptional cook. 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.

Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan's highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.

©2020 SpringHill Publishing; English translation copyright 2024 by Lin King (P)2025 Tantor Media Asian Genre Fiction Historical Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction World Literature China

Critic reviews

WINNER OF THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE
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I found the information in the book interesting, though the voices of the narrator made it more difficult to listen to the book in a more objective way.
I love food and loved to hear descriptions of so many dishes that it inspired me to find out about recipes of some of them

The narrator’s voice didn’t do it for me

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The story was quite simple but engaging in the same time. Each chapter was rich in food descriptions and cultural references which together with the relationship between characters were the biggest aspects of the story. Narrator was fantastic and she made it feel more authentic to me.

The only thing I missed was a bit more references to the culture, history and places which I would expect from travelogue.

Culture mixed with rich cuisine

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Very little story, naive arrogant author. Obsession with food. Boring. I wouldn’t recommend this book.

Weak storyline

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I don't care about the characters, the repetition of the fact that the protagonist really likes food makes me cringe, the narrator puts on an awful child-like voice for the translator and it's so hard to listen to.

irritating narration

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