University of Trier, Germany Kirsten Sandrock is Chair of English Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Würzburg. Her research ranges from the early modern literature and culture to contemporary Anglophone studies, and she has published widely on intercultural encounters, colonial and postcolonial studies, Shakespeare, travel writing, gender and genre studies. She is the author of Scottish Colonial Literature: Writing the Atlantic, 1603–1707 (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), co-editor of Locating Italy: East and West in British-Italian Transactions (2013) and of the Shakespeare Seminar Online.

• List of Illustrations | Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Introduction: Failures East and West – Cultural Encounters between East Asia and Europe - Ralf Hertel and Kirsten Sandrock Part I: Travellers and FailuresChapter 2: Imagining East Asia: The Failure of National Knowledge in Richard Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations of the English Nation (1589–1600) - Ralf Hertel Chapter 3: Fact and Fiction in the Writings of Wilhelm Joest about his Journey on Formosa in 1880 - Shaoji Yao Chapter 4: ‘An Honest Failure’: Simone de Beauvoir in China - Ruth Y. Hung Chapter 5: Lost in Laos: Failure in Henri Mouhot’s and Stephen Greenblatt’s Travel Writing - Barbara Schaff Part II: Encounters at Court Chapter 6: Louis XIV and the Kingdom of Siam: The Development and Failure of a Particular Example of Diplomatic and Intercultural Relations in the Colonial Era - Hans-Jürgen LüsebrinkChapter 7: Gender, Genre and the Truth Condition: Failure in Anna Leonowens’s The English Governess at the Siamese Court - Kirsten SandrockChapter 8: Chinese Kotow and European Handshake: Episodes in the History of Intercultural Etiquette in China around 1900 - Roland AltenburgerPart III: Contemporary Failures Chapter 9: Barthes and Bouvier in Japan: The Difficult Dialogue between Semiotics and Intercultural Communication - Alex DemeulenaereChapter 10: Between Failure and Empowerment: Historicity, Genre and Cultural Clashes in David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - Eva-Maria WindbergerChapter 11: Marx Between East and West: The Karl Marx Statue in Trier as an Example of Intercultural Failure? -Christian SoffelIndex