Interior Chinatown

Praise

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • A National Endowment for the Arts Big Read

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORKER • NPR • TIME • THE WASHINGTON POST • THE ATLANTIC • VANITY FAIR • VULTURE • THRILLIST • SHELF AWARENESS • SOUTHERN LIVING • INSIDEHOOK • KIRKUS REVIEWS • THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY • THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY

“Fresh and beautiful. . . . Interior Chinatown represents yet another stellar destination in the journey of a sui generis author of seemingly limitless skill and ambition.” —The New York Times Book Review

“[A] sharply observed, darkly humorous evocation of the Asian American experience.” 
—Entertainment Weekly

“Satire at its best, a shattering and darkly comic send-up of racial stereotyping in Hollywood . . . presented, perfectly, in the sharply hewed format of a screenplay. . . . Peeling back caricatures to paint vivid individual portraits, Yu eviscerates generalizations with the devastatingly specific.” 
—Vanity Fair

“Bold, even groundbreaking. . . . Interior Chinatown solders together mordant wit and melancholic whimsy to produce a moving exploration of race and assimilation.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“Interior Chinatown . . . recalls the humorous and heartfelt short stories of George Saunders, the metafictional high jinks of Mark Leyner, and films like The Truman Show.”
—The New York Times

“An inventive satire about racial stereotyping.” 
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR

“Meticulously crafted. . . . Yu tells us about ourselves with his haunting depictions of the immigrant experience, familial relationships, and the abiding desire to break from the pressures of conformity and live an authentic life.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books

“Part novel, part screenplay, part screed, and part sociology, this National Book Award winner is always funny and pretty savage.”
—Vulture

“Yu has a devilish good time poking fun at the racially blinkered ways of Hollywood. . . . [Interior Chinatown is] rollicking fun, and its reclamation of Asian American history, with all its attendant sorrows and hopes, holds out the possibility of a new, true story ahead.”
—New York Journal of Books

“Honest, funny, sad, and necessary satire.”
—Thrillist

“Like nothing you’ve read before—a moving and transportive work abounding with risks that pay off.”
—InsideHook

“Passionate and clever. . . . A caustic, absurd, and endearing exploration of Asian American stereotypes, police procedurals, and the immigrant experience.”
—Shelf Awareness

“A stunning novel about identity, race, societal expectations, and crippling anxiety told with humor and affection and a deep understanding of human nature.”
—The Washington Independent Review of Books

“Conflates history, sociology, and ethnography with the timeless evils of racism, sexism, and elitism in a multigenerational epic that’s both rollicking entertainment and scathing commentary.”
—Booklist (starred review)