Saturday 7 January 2023

Book Review: Interior Chinatown by Charles Wu

Interior Chinatown

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars 

 "All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages....."
                                from As You Like It by William Shakespeare

I think this completely sums up this book. Reading Charles Yu highly experimental fiction mean you step into a world where everyone is an actor and the world itself is the production set. Roles are based on race, age and gender. Everyone is limited Willis Wu dreams of eventually progressing from Generic Asian Guy to Kung Fu Guy. Written as a script, laid out as such on the page this is a novel novel. This is a satirical sociopolitical commentary on the effects of the various political Acts restricting Asians in America through the 1800 to recent times. Well worth a read, it won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction

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