More than 300 years ago, Taiwan was a controversial topic in London thanks to a stupendous fraud perpetrated by a Frenchman claiming to have been born there.
He made up an entire fantasy for the island with a fake history, a fake language and long list of outrageous claims that made his book, A Description of Formosa, a publishing sensation in London in 1704. Even the Bishop of London swallowed Psalmanazar's story and invited him to teach his (fake) Formosan language at Oxford University.
The Formosa fantasy world he created, including elephants and camels, gold mines and outlandish religious sacrificial ceremonies, almost rivals Tolkein's Middle Earth, with the crucial difference that many people believed it to be real.
This is the story of one of the great frauds in literary history.
- ISBN13 9789888422128
- Publish Date 28 August 2017 (first published 1 May 2017)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 1 June 2021
- Publish Country HK
- Imprint Earnshaw Books Limited
- Format Paperback
- Pages 264
- Language English