The Family Chao: A Novel Hardcover – February 1, 2022 by Lan Samantha Chang

Description

Author: Chang Lan Samantha

Package Dimensions: 0x0x788

Number Of Pages: 320

Release Date: 01-02-2022

Details: Product Description
An acclaimed storyteller returns with “a gorgeous and gripping literary mystery” that explores “family, betrayal, passion, race, culture and the American Dream” (Jean Kwok).
The residents of Haven, Wisconsin, have dined on the Fine Chao restaurant’s delicious Americanized Chinese food for thirty-five years, content to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. Whether or not Big Leo Chao is honest, or his wife, Winnie, is happy, their food tastes good and their three sons earned scholarships to respectable colleges. But when the brothers reunite in Haven, the Chao family’s secrets and simmering resentments erupt at last.
Before long, brash, charismatic, and tyrannical patriarch Leo is found dead―presumed murdered―and his sons find they’ve drawn the exacting gaze of the entire town. The ensuing trial brings to light potential motives for all three brothers: Dagou, the restaurant’s reckless head chef; Ming, financially successful but personally tortured; and the youngest, gentle but lost college student James. As the spotlight on the brothers tightens―and the family dog meets an unexpected fate―Dagou, Ming, and James must reckon with the legacy of their father’s outsized appetites and their own future survival.
Brimming with heartbreak, comedy, and suspense, The Family Chao offers a kaleidoscopic, highly entertaining portrait of a Chinese American family grappling with the dark undercurrents of a seemingly pleasant small town.
Review
“An ingenious and cunning reboot of Dostoyevsky’s
The Brothers Karamazov. The harrowing and humorous family drama is wrapped in a murder mystery… In this timely, trenchant, and thoroughly entertaining book, an immigrant family’s dreams are paid for in blood. For Chang, this marks a triumphant return.”
―
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Family drama, murder mystery, love story,
The Family Chao is an oftentimes funny and sometimes sad portrait of a Chinese American family who runs that most ubiquitous of institutions: the Chinese restaurant. With nuance and slyness, wit and empathy, Chang turns the desires and deceits of one unhappy family into a moving and compelling saga of that classic American illness: ambition.”
―
Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Committed

“Lan Samantha Chang’s
The Family Chao is a modern-day Brothers Karamazov, a gorgeous and gripping literary mystery that leads the reader into a hall of mirrors, reflecting with its kaleidoscopic vision themes like family, betrayal, passion, race, culture and the American Dream. Devastating and searing, laugh-out-loud funny and profound, Chang’s latest novel is infused with beautiful, evocative writing that will quicken your heart and mind. A masterpiece.”
―
Jean Kwok, author of Searching for Sylvie Lee

”
The Family Chao is riveting, delicious, full of love and danger, an intricate look at the so-called American Dream and one small-town American family trying and failing to save itself. Lan Samantha Chang’s characters are unforgettable: dear, maddening, funny, cruel. The Family Chao is an up-to-the-minute look at what it means to be accused and visible in America, and also an old-fashioned page-turner. A book to stay up late reading, and then to dream about.”
―
Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Souvenir Museum

“I loved Lan Samantha Chang’s
The Family Chao, at once a brilliant reimagining of Dostoevsky and a wholly original and gripping story about the passions, rivalries, and searing pressures that roil a singular immigrant family.”
―
Jess Walter, author of The Cold Millions

“In this symphonic novel, Lan Samantha Chang gives us a multitude of souls lost and found: the gregarious are isolated, the ruthless are hunted, the voiceless scheme with hidden power, the innocent suffer from murderous desire. This is one of the finest and most ambitious novels about America I’ve read in recent years.”
―
Yiyun Li, author of Must I Go

“A Dickensian drama of family conflicts and intrigues; an