Zhuoliu Wu

Wu Zhuoliu (吳濁流) wrote the definitive novel of Taiwan's colonial experience. Orphan of Asia follows a Taiwanese intellectual caught between Japanese colonial rule and Chinese cultural identity — never fully belonging to either world, an orphan of the geopolitical forces that shaped modern East Asia. Written during the Japanese occupation and published in 1946, it remains one of the most important works of Taiwanese literature.

The novel's title has become a metaphor for Taiwan's own historical predicament — caught between empires, searching for selfhood. Wu Zhuoliu wrote with the clear-eyed realism of someone who had lived through the contradictions he described, and Orphan of Asia endures because its central questions — about identity, belonging, and the cost of colonial subjugation — remain unresolved and urgently relevant.