Taiwan Travelogue

Book review for Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-zi. I rated it 5 stars ⚠️ This review contains spoilers! Taiwan Travelogue is about a Japanese woman named Aoyama Chizuko who spends a year travelling around Taiwan in 1939, and writes a book about her experiences - especially on all the delicious food she gets to eat. By the end of this one I was for sure craving noodles. The English translation of this book by Lin King just recently won the 2026 International Booker Prize, and I also saw it pop up on social media which prompted me to check it out. So the setup for this book is initially a bit to wrap your head around. It kicks off with the premise that Aoyama Chizuko was a real person. After her travels, she published this travelogue in Japanese in 1954. The book was then translated into Mandarin Chinese in 1977, but goes out of print and Yang Shuang-zi (the author listed on the cover of this book) found the originals and published a new Mandarin Chinese edition of this book in 2020.…