Charles Yu Wins National Book Award for 'Interior Chinatown'
Congratulations to Charles Yu, who won the National Book Award for fiction on Wednesday for his mind-bending satire, Interior Chinatown, a sendup of Hollywood and Asian-American stereotypes. The novel, written in the form of a screenplay, features an aspiring actor named Willis Wu who confronts casual racism and the cruel hierarchies of the entertainment world in his quest to graduate from bit roles as the "Delivery Guy" or "Silent Henchman." The judges praised the novel as "wonderfully inventive" and "by turns hilarious and flat out heartbreaking." Watch the announcement here (skip to 1:50:17).