Puppet Flower: A Novel of 1867 Formosa

In 1867, the Rover ship sank off the coast of southern Taiwan, leading to the deaths of 14 sailors. In retaliation, the United States launched military operations against local tribes. The U.S. consul to Amoy, Charles Le Gendre, negotiated a treaty with Tauketok, the chief of the eighteen tribes, securing safe passage for shipwrecked sailors. Yao-Chang Chen's historical novel Puppet Flower retells the story, highlighting the multiethnic and multilingual society of southern Taiwan in the nineteenth century and the importance of Taiwanese indigenous cultures to the islands history. The novel was recently adapted into a popular Taiwanese TV miniseries, Seqalu: Formosa 1867.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 328 pages
Publication date: 11 April 2023
Publisher: Columbia University Press

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 peoples 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 islands history.

A gripping work of historical fiction, Puppet Flower is a powerful revisionist narrative of a formative moment in Taiwans past. It was recently adapted into a popular Taiwanese TV miniseries, Seqalu: Formosa 1867.

Weight: 414g
Dimension: 139 x 217 x 27 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780231208512