Winner of the 2026 International Booker PrizeWinner of the 2024 National Book Award for Translated LiteratureWinner of the 2024 Baifang Schell Book Prize for Outstanding Translated Literature from Chinese LanguageA bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history, and powerMay 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 as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.Soon a Taiwanese woman--who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name--is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko's travels all over the Land of the South and also prov
