There is something chimerical about the way the author of Taipei Story claims authorship of her work. Sometimes she’s Rebecca F. Kuang, at other times an androgynous R.F. Kuang. Different editions of this, her latest, carry different versions of her name. As I cracked Taipei Story open, I wondered whether this has any bearing on her diverse and whimsical bibliography—she has written epic, sweeping fantasy in The Poppy Wars series, Babel and Katabasis, and also a sharp, zeitgeist-friendly novel about the global book publishing industry in Yellowface. Taipei Story is equally difficult to pin down in terms of genre—is it memoir? A travelogue? A coming-of-age novel?

Lily Chen is a 19-year-old Chinese American student from Yale who enrols in an intensive language course in Taiwan to learn Mandarin Chinese, a language she spoke as a child at home but subsequently lost touch with. Over the summer, Lily struggles to become as familiar with the language as she would like to, getting frustrated at the slowness with which language percolates into our brains after a certain age, and also fascinated by the way speaking Chinese seems to unlock different parts of her personality.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that the structure of the language you speak influences or determines how you think and perceive the world, and this remains the constant underpinning of the book even as Lily navigates life’s more mundane challenges—conflict with her roommate, an aborted romance that ends in awkwardness and mutual dislike, and the death of her beloved grandfather that leads to a depressive episode.

Lily is not quite Rebecca, but one can sense that her experiences are informed hugely by the author’s. In interviews, Kuang has said that she also attended an intensive Mandarin language programme in Taiwan, during which her grandfather (gonggong) abruptly passed away. At the same time, Lily is a version of her to whom certain other things might have happened, and Kuang exposes her fascination with stories other than hers in a passage early in the book. “I always felt a strange jealousy over even the most mundane evidence of another life—an assortment of mugs, a stack of test prep books—for no reason other than that life was not mine,” she writes.

Taipei Story is beautifully written, with a slow, mellow pace and the action taking place almost entirely inside the protagonist’s head. Yet, Kuang has evolved to be such a deft writer that the book turns out to be a page-turner—even to a palate jaded by too many murder mysteries and thrillers, the suspense is inescapable, especially during the ill-fated almost-romance part of the narrative.

Her character work is great in this novel—not just the protagonist but her roommate, the love interest, her teachers, her family and even her grandparents, who we only meet through her reminiscences, feel alive and real. This is a huge step forward for Kuang, whose earlier books Babel and Katabasis especially, fell flat for me because the characters never stood out as individuals.

Language as character

The main character, the MVP so to speak, of this book, however, is Mandarin Chinese—the learning of it, the speaking of it, and the living of it. As Lily gains confidence in her ability to articulate more and more complex thoughts in it, her regret at not knowing it better and a sense of time running out pervades the book.

Kuang has said that like Lily, she had grand plans to record an oral history with her grandfather but kept putting it off because she was embarrassed by the state of her Chinese. This is true of Lily as well—intertwined with her growing understanding of the language is the story of her extended family, where they came from, what happened to them, the political upheavals they lived through, and how they ended up where they did. It is the story of the Chinese diaspora, essentially, perhaps familiar to us from other narratives but still fresh and interesting through Lily’s eyes.

Taiwan’s political history and status, one of the most complex and sensitive issues in international geopolitics, is an important theme of the book. The fluidity of identities seems to be embodied by the island, which has a fraught history with Mainland China while operating as an independent, democratic nation. In a fantastic passage that doesn’t read like a history lesson but is, Kuang touches upon how cultures retain even the most traumatic episodes of their existence in their everyday lives. Speaking of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan between 1895 and 1945, she writes: “Many older Taiwanese people had learned Japanese as their first written language and still found it easier to read Japanese than Mandarin. Compared to the chaos and brutal repression of martial rule under the Nationalists, they remembered the era of Japanese occupation as one of relative peace, prosperity, law and order.”

There are many such digressions, giving the book more of a memoir-flavour from time to time without taking away its narrative force. Taipei Story can’t quite decide what it is and—in a rare instance of literary alchemy that is delightful to a reader tired of the over-labelling practised by the publishing industry—it works.

Shrabonti Bagchi is a Bengaluru-based writer and editor.

There is something chimerical about the way the author of Taipei Story claims authorship of her work. Sometimes she’s Rebecca F. Kuang, at other times an androgynous R.F. Kuang. Different editions of this, her latest, carry different versions of her name. As I cracked Taipei Story open, I wondered whether this has any bearing on her diverse and whimsical bibliography—she has written epic, sweeping fantasy in The Poppy Wars series, Babel and Katabasis, and also a sharp, zeitgeist-friendly novel about the global book publishing industry in Yellowface. Taipei Story is equally difficult to pin down in terms of genre—is it memoir? A travelogue? A coming-of-age novel?

Lily Chen is a 19-year-old Chinese American student from Yale who enrols in an intensive language course in Taiwan to learn Mandarin Chinese, a language she spoke as a child at home but subsequently lost touch with. Over the summer, Lily struggles to become as familiar with the language as she would like to, getting frustrated at the slowness with which language percolates into our brains after a certain age, and also fascinated by the way speaking Chinese seems to unlock different parts of her personality.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that the structure of the language you speak influences or determines how you think and perceive the world, and this remains the constant underpinning of the book even as Lily navigates life’s more mundane challenges—conflict with her roommate, an aborted romance that ends in awkwardness and mutual dislike, and the death of her beloved grandfather that leads to a depressive episode.

Lily is not quite Rebecca, but one can sense that her experiences are informed hugely by the author’s. In interviews, Kuang has said that she also attended an intensive Mandarin language programme in Taiwan, during which her grandfather (gonggong) abruptly passed away. At the same time, Lily is a version of her to whom certain other things might have happened, and Kuang exposes her fascination with stories other than hers in a passage early in the book. “I always felt a strange jealousy over even the most mundane evidence of another life—an assortment of mugs, a stack of test prep books—for no reason other than that life was not mine,” she writes.

Taipei Story is beautifully written, with a slow, mellow pace and the action taking place almost entirely inside the protagonist’s head. Yet, Kuang has evolved to be such a deft writer that the book turns out to be a page-turner—even to a palate jaded by too many murder mysteries and thrillers, the suspense is inescapable, especially during the ill-fated almost-romance part of the narrative.

Her character work is great in this novel—not just the protagonist but her roommate, the love interest, her teachers, her family and even her grandparents, who we only meet through her reminiscences, feel alive and real. This is a huge step forward for Kuang, whose earlier books Babel and Katabasis especially, fell flat for me because the characters never stood out as individuals.

Language as character

The main character, the MVP so to speak, of this book, however, is Mandarin Chinese—the learning of it, the speaking of it, and the living of it. As Lily gains confidence in her ability to articulate more and more complex thoughts in it, her regret at not knowing it better and a sense of time running out pervades the book.

Kuang has said that like Lily, she had grand plans to record an oral history with her grandfather but kept putting it off because she was embarrassed by the state of her Chinese. This is true of Lily as well—intertwined with her growing understanding of the language is the story of her extended family, where they came from, what happened to them, the political upheavals they lived through, and how they ended up where they did. It is the story of the Chinese diaspora, essentially, perhaps familiar to us from other narratives but still fresh and interesting through Lily’s eyes.

Taiwan’s political history and status, one of the most complex and sensitive issues in international geopolitics, is an important theme of the book. The fluidity of identities seems to be embodied by the island, which has a fraught history with Mainland China while operating as an independent, democratic nation. In a fantastic passage that doesn’t read like a history lesson but is, Kuang touches upon how cultures retain even the most traumatic episodes of their existence in their everyday lives. Speaking of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan between 1895 and 1945, she writes: “Many older Taiwanese people had learned Japanese as their first written language and still found it easier to read Japanese than Mandarin. Compared to the chaos and brutal repression of martial rule under the Nationalists, they remembered the era of Japanese occupation as one of relative peace, prosperity, law and order.”

There are many such digressions, giving the book more of a memoir-flavour from time to time without taking away its narrative force. Taipei Story can’t quite decide what it is and—in a rare instance of literary alchemy that is delightful to a reader tired of the over-labelling practised by the publishing industry—it works.

Shrabonti Bagchi is a Bengaluru-based writer and editor.