Author R.F. Kuang Faces Backlash Over Depiction of Israeli Pianist in 'Taipei Story'

It’s déjà vu all over again for survivors of the YA Twitter wars of the pre-Elon era. Someone with an advance copy of a forthcoming and much-anticipated novel has posted screenshots from the book as evidence that the author is guilty of thought crimes. This has led to denunciations on Instagram; solemn, brow-furrowing considerations of the affair on YouTube; and firebrand declarations on TikTok. Depending on how familiar you are with how these controversies work, however, you may be surprised to learn that the latest target is R.F. Kuang, the author of such bestselling fantasy novels as Babel, Katabasis, and The Poppy Wars—all books centering elementary critiques of colonialism. She is ordinarily a favorite of online crusaders, although this, perhaps, is what has gotten her into trouble. Kuang’s Taipei Story won’t be published until September, and it’s a departure for the author, who has written only one other non-fantasy novel, the publishing-world satire Yellowface. Her new novel is the story of a Chinese American college student who takes an intensive summer course in Mandarin at a university in the capital of Taiwan. But at one “problematic” point in the story, Lily, the narrator, who is in a state of considerable emotional distress, impulsively ducks into a concert hall. The performer is a visiting artist, a pianist from Israel, who plays Liszt, converting Lily into a classical music appreciator. The pianist is unnamed, speaks not a single line of dialogue, and has no interaction with Lily or role in the novel’s plot. He appears on exactly two pages of Taipei Story. That’s it—the cause of Instagram comments charging Kuang with having “chosen the side of the oppressor” and with “normalizing a genocidal state,” as well as calls for boycotts of all her books. According to Kuang’s critics, the mere mention of any Israeli character that is not immediately qualified with denunciations of the state itself contributes to the subjugation of Palestinians and constitutes “a propaganda tool of the first rank.” Other commenters have exclaimed “My soul is crushed!” and declared Kuang’s sin ineradicable: “Even if she would remove the character from that none existend state, the damage is done. I personally would never buy one of her books ever again.” Because this reaction is ridiculous, Kuang also has many defenders, people who point out that Israelis exist, that not all of them support the war in Gaza, that Kuang has consistently adopted the approved positions on other matters of geopolitics and so could not possibly be a Zionist, and finally that since Taipei Story has yet to be published and most of the people amping themselves up over this controversy haven’t even read it, it might be too soon to draw any conclusions about its author’s alleged perfidy. The final version of the book must first be scrutinized to make sure it doesn’t depict the Israeli pianist in a sympathetic light. Kuang wisely has not responded to requests that she address this “issue.” No response or apology can ever be sufficient for the breed of conflict entrepreneurs who live for such online pile-ons and the rich vein of clout they are able to mine from them. If anyone should know that, it’s Kuang, whose work has always exhibited a canny grasp of prevailing political fashions as gleaned from close study of social media. Or, as a friend and Kuang skeptic recently put it: “This is what happens when you cultivate a stupid audience that thinks they’re smart and thinks you’re smart and moral because you do ‘Colonialism Bad 101’ lessons through YA prose.” Ironically, Taipei Story represents a departure from the didactic qualities of Kuang’s earlier books. According to a profile published in the New Yorker last year, this novel is significantly autobiographical, based on Kuang’s own experiences studying Mandarin in Taipei while coping with the death of her grandfather. Much to my own surprise (I am not a fan of her other books), I enjoyed Taipei Story a lot. Kuang’s observations of the shifting power relationships among 20-year-old friends ring sharp and true. Her vivid descriptions of Taipei and the way her narrator responds to the city create a heady sense of place that her other novels lack. Lily’s accounts of how Mandarin works and her own difficulties getting the hang of it are fascinating. And, finally, Kuang’s narrator feels like a real person, a complicated mix of dutiful passivity and confused yearning as she tries to sort through her expectations and fears toward a sense of what she truly desires from life. If Kuang’s early books often come across as the product of market research on what a certain type of reader wants in their fantasy fiction, Taipei Story has the authenticity of genuine self-expression. Kuang’s characters have always struggled with the tension between their drive to live up to the expectations of others and their suspicion that the meritocracy they’re competing in might not be worth winning. At the same time, her earlier novels seem engineered to win the approval of precisely the types of sanctimonious, exacting readers who are turning on her now, people with limited real-world experience who compete with each other to perform the most perfected version of ideologies they’ve picked up online. Those ideologies aren’t always wrong, of course, but like the meritocracies Kuang questions in her fiction and the rote platitudes Lily learns to recite in her Mandarin classes, they come across as more received than considered. The notion that novelists must portray Israeli characters as nothing but monsters and that forbidding them to mention their nation at all will do anything to help the desperate residents of Gaza exhibits a belief in the magical powers of language that few but the young and the terminally online can sustain. Just a few years ago, novelists far less dependent on this type of reader felt obliged to alter their books in response to similar kerfuffles. But Kuang seems determined to ride it out, and this, like the artistic leap forward of Taipei Story, suggests she’s finally figuring out how to be true to herself.