Tâigael: Stories from Taiwanese and Gaelic, ed. Hannah Stevens & Will Buckingham

About this book

In a Taiwanese temple, a saliva goddess vanishes without trace. A Hogmanay party is disrupted by an unexpected guest. In Taipei, an elderly prophet foretells a subway attack. On the way home from a day in court, a woman finds a sheep tangled in the brambles. Four stories, four writers, four languages: Gaelic, Taiwanese, Mandarin & English.

Tâigael is a first-of-its-kind collaborative writing and translation project, bringing together writers from Scotland and Taiwan, to explore language, translation and culture. These four stories by Elissa Hunter-Dorans (Scotland), Kiú-kiong 玖芎 (Taiwan), Lisa MacDonald (Scotland) and Naomi Sím (Taiwan) cross between languages and cultures to speak of things unspoken, and to find new and surprising connections.

Taiwanese (Tâi-gí) and Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) are languages that have been historically marginalised and suppressed. Taigael presents two newly commissioned short stories in Gaelic, and two in Taiwanese, or Tâi-gí. And then it translates these stories between the two languages, via Mandarin and English. Each story is published in all four languages, to allow the largest possible audience.

Praise for Tâigael

Garry MacKenzie, author of Scotland: a Literary Guide for Travellers and Ben Dorain: a conversation with a mountain

"Four thoughtful and thought-provoking stories in conversation across languages and cultures - how exciting, and how necessary! This marvellous anthology, full of grace and wit, shows how writers and indeed whole literatures thrive when in contact with other voices. "

Li Yuan (Taiwan) 李遠, screenwriter and Taiwan Minister for Culture | — 台灣文化部長、作家李遠（小野）

“I am grateful for the publication of this book. A mother tongue is the root of culture, and a culture that loses its mother tongue is like a plant without roots. This book will greatly inspire the promotion of language equality and literary translation.”

Michelle Kuo (Taiwan), author of Reading With Patrick

“In this imaginative and profoundly original book, two seemingly distant worlds—Gaelic Scotland and Taiwanese communities—are brought into resonant dialogue through their suppressed languages, enduring myths, and local beliefs. By placing Gaelic and Taiwanese side by side, the book creates a striking intimacy with the daily lives that preserve them. Both Scotland and Taiwan, small democracies with rich and complex histories, emerge here as sites of cultural resilience and deep-rooted memory. Beautifully translated across four languages, these evocative and subtle stories show, as editors Hannah Stevens and Will Buckingham put it, ‘what it means to seek out connections that might bind us more closely.’”

Publication date: 15th June 2025

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