In 1867, an American merchant ship, the Rover, sank off the coast of southern Taiwan. Fourteen sailors reached the shore, where almost all were killed by indigenous people. In retaliation, the United States launched two disastrous military operations against local tribes. Eventually, the U.S. consul to Amoy, Charles Le Gendre, negotiated a treaty with Tauketok, the chief of the eighteen tribes of the area, that secured safe passage for shipwrecked sailors.
Yao-Chang Chen's historical novel Puppet Flower retells the story of the Rover incident, bringing to light its pivotal role in Taiwanese history. Merging documented events and literary imagination, the novel vividly depicts Tauketok, Le Gendre, and other historical figures alongside the story of Butterfly, a young woman of mixed ethnic heritage who serves as an interpreter and mediator during the crisis. Chen deftly reconstructs the multiethnic and multilingual society of southern Taiwan in the second half of the nineteenth century from multiple perspectives, portraying local people's daily struggles for survival and their interactions with Han Chinese settlers, Qing dynasty bureaucrats, and Western officials, tradesmen, and adventurers. The novel explores nineteenth-century Sino-American and Sino-indigenous relations and emphasizes the centrality of Taiwanese indigenous cultures to the island's history.
A gripping work of historical fiction, Puppet Flower is a powerful revisionist narrative of a formative moment in Taiwan's past. It was recently adapted into a popular Taiwanese TV miniseries, Seqalu: Formosa 1867.
Industry Reviews
This well-wrought book transports us to a complicated yet majestic period in Taiwan's history. A significant novel, steeped in this unique place while echoing around the world. -- Lu Ping, author of Love and Revolution: A Novel About Song Qingling and Sun Yat-sen
Was Formosa a place too treacherous to visit? The author of Puppet Flower boldly takes up this question and tries to answer it from various perspectives, most notably that of the island's indigenous peoples. Strongly recommended! -- Li Ang, author of The Lost Garden: A Novel
This engaging historical novel shows how a small event on a remote island can make history. -- Ping-hui Liao, Chuan Lyu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies, University of California, San Diego
In the novel Puppet Flower, Chen explores the complex intersection of international politics and cross-cultural exchange in mid-nineteenth century Taiwan. By imagining the contributions of a mixed-race sibling pair, Chen brings to life the actions and complex societies of indigenous and plains peoples at the threshold of new forms of colonialism. -- Margaret Mih Tillman, author of Raising China's Revolutionaries: Modernizing Childhood for Cosmopolitan Nationalists and Liberated Comrades, 1920s-1950s
[A] nuanced depiction of a formative Formosa. * Taipei Times *
Chen's novel successfully delivers an alternative history of Taiwan in which all the involved subjectivities, especially those that have traditionally been neglected by official narratives, are given a voice. -- Serena De Marchi * Asian Review of Books *
The whole novel is fascinating in that it mixes in a fairly messy but also fairly conventional personal story with the complex manoeuvrings of the various powers seeking control of Taiwan. -- John Alvey * The Modern Novel *
[A] unique reimagining of an obscure event in 'a turning point' year in Taiwanese history. Told from a multitude of perspectives, particularly of indigenous peoples, Chen's story does not sacrifice history and complicated colonial relations for cute dramatic contrivances. This is historical fiction with an emphasis on the former. -- Peggy Kurkowski * The Historical Novels Review *
