08/06/2026
Taiwan, 1938. A Japanese novelist arrives on the island with a monstrous appetite and no interest in the empire that invited her. Her Taiwanese interpreter arranges everything, the train journeys, the braised pork rice, the winter melon tea, and somewhere along the way becomes the person she cannot stop thinking about.
Taiwan Travelogue is a love story between two women told through food, language, and the quiet weight of who holds power over whom. Yang Shuang-zi wrote it as a fake translation of a lost text, a trick so convincing it became a sensation in Taiwan. Last month it won the 2026 International Booker Prize, the first book translated from Mandarin Chinese ever to do so, after already taking the US National Book Award for Translated Literature.
Tender, clever, and quietly devastating. New arrival, in stock now at booksmandala.com.
