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Charles Yu, author portrait
Photo:Bea Phi·CC BY-SA 4.0·
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Charles Yu

American
Born 1976
Charles Chowkai Yu is an American writer and lawyer. He is the author of the novels How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Interior Chinatown, as well as the short-story collections Third Class Superhero and Sorry Please Thank You. In 2007 he was named a "5 under 35" honoree by the National Book Foundation. In 2020, Interior Chinatown won the National Book Award for fiction. Yu created a television adaptation of Interior Chinatown which premiered in 2024.
On LuvemBooks, we've reviewed Interior Chinatown.
1
Books Reviewed
In order

Charles Yu books in order

6 books; 1 reviewed on LuvemBooks. Dates and covers from Amazon.

  1. Third Class Superhero cover
    2006
    Third Class Superhero
    Amazon ↗
  2. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe cover
    2010
    How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
    Amazon ↗
  3. Sorry Please Thank You: Stories cover
    2012
    Sorry Please Thank You: Stories
    Amazon ↗
  4. The Best American Science Fiction And Fantasy 2017 cover
    2017
    The Best American Science Fiction And Fantasy 2017
    Amazon ↗
  5. A People's Future of the United States cover
    2019
    A People's Future of the United States
    Amazon ↗
  6. Interior Chinatown cover
    2020
    Interior Chinatown
    Our review →
Cover of Interior Chinatown
Interior Chinatown

4.2/5

reader rating · 6,485 ratings

Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown is a National Book Award–winning novel that deploys the screenplay format as a vehicle for biting satire, using the story of Willis Wu — a "Generic Asian Man" trapped in the background of a fictional TV police procedural — to interrogate racial stereotyping in Hollywood, the Asian American immigrant experience, and the suffocating pressure of inherited identity. Named a New York Times bestseller and a best book of the year by outlets including The New Yorker, NPR, Time, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Vanity Fair, it stands as one of the most formally inventive and culturally urgent American novels of recent years.

Reviewed Mar 23, 2026

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Authors Like Charles Yu
Matt Haig

Matt Haig

Fiction
Matt Haig's The Midnight Library explores similar questions about identity and unlived lives, told in warm, accessible prose with a clear emotional throughline.
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Jhumpa Lahiri

Fiction
Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies offers a quieter, precise look at immigrant life and generational weight, exploring what gets lost between cultures.
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Taylor Jenkins Reid

Taylor Jenkins Reid

Fiction
Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo shares a critique of Hollywood erasing identity to survive the studio system, presenting it through a more conventional form.
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Emily St. John Mandel

Emily St. John Mandel

Fiction
Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven uses a traveling Shakespeare troupe to explore identity and survival, echoing Charles Yu's use of performance worlds to examine human stories.
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Station Eleven
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Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett

Fiction
Terry Pratchett's Making Money shares Yu's sharp satire of institutional structures, interrogating systemic inertia and power through a genre frame.
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Mort
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J

J. B. Priestley

Fiction
J. B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls skewers class hierarchies in Edwardian England with the same satirical precision Charles Yu brings to dissecting who gets to matter in society.
1 book reviewed
An Inspector Calls