Longlisted for the 2025 Pen America Literary Awards Pen Translation Prize2024 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalist Multicultural and Historical (Adult Fiction)
On the nation island of Taiwan, Ngoo Tsín-suī is a humble young man with a gift for handling water buffalo and a character that mirrors the buffalo's tenacity and strength. His father forces him to give up his dreams for a higher education to work on the family farm. When his father kicks him out of the family home, Tsín-suī becomes a tutor, gets a job in an agricultural research lab that specializes in banana trees, marries and starts a family before the War in the Pacific. When Japan surrenders in 1945, the Chinese Nationalists arrive, and Taiwanese are handed from one master to another. Life in Taiwan takes a turn for the worse under the Chiang's iron-fisted regime. When Tsín-suī witnesses the brutal murder of his friend during the barbaric political suppression of the 228 uprisings, he is terrorized, flees for his own life, and goes into hiding. He and his family manage to survive military roundups and summary executions. Over time, Tsín-suī leads the country's largest banana exports cooperative to a near-monopoly. However, secret police, spies, lies, and endemic corruption set a trap for Tsín-suī that leads to his tragic downfall.
Wang-tai Lee dramatically weaves the story of "Banana King" Ngoo Tsín-suī (1908-1993) with actual events, fictional elements, and the culture and politics of Taiwan. The multilinguistic dialogue- retained by Timothy Smith in the English translation-creates authentic characters and highlights "the struggles of native Taiwanese to adapt to successive colonial regimes."