📖 PREORDER — expected release date 8 September 2026. Order now to reserve your copy. Your card will be charged at the time of order. We will ship as soon as stock arrives at our Indore store.
From R.F. Kuang — the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel, Yellowface, and Katabasis — a wryly humorous and profoundly moving coming-of-age novel about grief, language, and culture shock, set against the backdrop of an unforgettable summer in Taipei.
Yale student Lily Chen arrives in Taipei hungry: for family, for culture, for connection. She's there for a summer at the National Taiwan University on an intensive Mandarin language programme — like so many Chinese American students before her — hoping to finally meet the Chinese self she inherited but never fully understood.
But her summer of discovery quickly unravels. Her classes are gruelling, her roommate is unbearable, and a reckless, deeply awkward trip to the hot springs with a guy she barely knows soon has her classmates viciously gossiping. She feels adrift, a foreigner in a country she thought would feel like home.
Then shocking news arrives: Lily's grandfather has passed away. The loss forces her to grapple with now-unanswerable questions about her family history — and pulls her into a poignant, often hilarious, often devastating journey of self-discovery.
Taipei Story asks: What if the diaspora fantasy of homecoming never comes true? What if learning a language can't bring you any closer to the people you're trying to reach? What if you search for your family's history, but your family doesn't want to share? What if you wait too long to ask the right questions?
About the author
Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel, Yellowface, and Katabasis. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards, and been shortlisted for the Hugo, World Fantasy, and many others. A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford, and is currently pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.
Style and influences
Kuang has described Taipei Story as a coming-of-age novel “in the larky style of” Elif Batuman and Patricia Lockwood. After the dark academia of Babel and Katabasis and the publishing satire of Yellowface, this is her first foray into literary fiction grounded in language schools, food courts, and the messy bits of trying to come home.
Preorder notes
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Release date: 8 September 2026
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Edition: HarperCollins paperback (UK / India trade edition)
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Pages: 288
- We will ship as soon as stock arrives at our Indore warehouse. Local Indore customers can collect from store.
- Cover and final price may be subject to publisher revisions.
