The Formosa Fraud, Paperback

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.

Graham Earnshaw is a writer and publisher who has long lived in the China world. He has written and published a number of books, including On Your Own in China (1984), Tales of Old Shanghai (2008) and an account of his continuing walk across China, The Great Walk of China (2010). His translation of the Jin Yong kung fu novel The Book and The Sword was published by Oxford University Press in 2004.

• Dimensions: 224 x 152
• Author: Graham Earnshaw
• Cover type: Paperback
• Publishing Year: 2022
• Publishing Month: 2
• Pages: 256
• Language: English
• Publisher: Earnshaw Books Ltd
• Weight: 340 g