R.F. Kuang is a star novelist with an impressive list of bestsellers and awards. After establishing herself as a fantasy writer in the late 2010s, in 2023 she published a modern satire, Yellowface. Like many other successful artists, she was seen as a champion of progressive politics, thanks to the anticolonialism theme of her fantasy novels and her examination of race and privilege in Yellowface. She withdrew from the Dubai Festival of Literature in December 2025 following the BDS movement’s advisory.

Kuang’s upcoming novel is Taipei Story, described as a coming-of-age story about a Chinese American student who is in Taiwan to learn Mandarin. Then an unlikely scandal happened, as the novel has an Israeli minor character.

The advance reader copy of the novel shows a passage about an Israeli pianist’s performance in Taiwan. Commentaries on social media suggest that his appearance is no longer than a couple of pages and the episode is part of the protagonist’s effort to blend in with the locals. The maestro might be inspired by Daniel Barenboim, who is popular in Taiwan.

Like in many other online controversies, the popular commenters use online aliases. One of the first accounts to report this discovery on X was named sylv/kaz, who, in a viral post,........

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