Taiwan Travelogue

A Novel

By: Yang Shuang-Zi, Lin King - translator

Narrated by: Sarah Skaer

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

Critic reviews

WINNER OF THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE

An Evolution of Limerent Love

TT is the history of lie-filled relationship between two acquaintances that builds understanding and leads to a discrete unrequited limerence that percolates through food, drink and travel to emerge as a healthy melodramatic realistic finale as the river of time flows unceasingly onward.

Taiwan Travelogue journey

Love the relationship between the two women. And the food descriptions are wonderfully evocative as you can almost taste them on the page.

Beautiful story

The story is beautiful and educational, but the narration is terrible. The book definitely deserves all the accolades, but you ruined it with one of the worst narrations.

Very disappointing

This is one book which should be read not listened to. The audiobook I discovered left out significant parts of the written book. And worse the narration was terrible. It was extremely difficult to hear and understand the baby voice given to the translator in the story.

Ten Hours of Babytalk

The narrator, Sarah Skaer, speaks in an annoying, breathy voice that is probably supposed to sound like a sweet, gentle Japanese girl but comes off as babytalk. Ten hours of babytalk.