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蕉王吳振瑞 by 李旺台
4.0

First read in Mandarin. Will update review once I finished the English translation.

It’s a very niche topic about banana farming post ww2 in Taiwan. I love that the dialogues are mostly written in Taiwanese with a mixture of Japanese, while the descriptions are written in mandarin. Definitely a challenging read because my Taiwanese isn’t as good—especially the details about how agriculture escaped me. It’ll be interesting to see how the English translation approaches this book that has 3 languages in it lol

I’d recommend this to readers who have a bit more background in Taiwanese history, since there are lots of references to modern TW politics that aren’t always explained in detail. I really enjoyed this aspect though. I’ve read enough Japanese colonization and 228 stories that this is a refreshing angle.

This book reminds me a bit of MATER 2-10 in that the author’s political ideology is quite obvious, and hence it can read a bit biased. In trying to demonstrate the corruption in KMT-controlled authoritarian rule for 38 years (which is ofc terrible), I feel the author was trying too hard to paint the Japanese colonizers in a good light. I think this could’ve been balanced out. Both authoritarian regimes were terrible, and TW people deserve to rule themselves. There’s no need to say one colonizer is better than the other