Chinese American culture, murder mystery, and Dostoyevsky in 'The Family Chao'

Patriarch Leo Chao is murdered at his restaurant at the beginning of Lan Samantha Chang's new novel The Family Chao. Eventually family secrets and bitterness reveal themselves — much like a Dostoyevsky novel, from whom Chao took a lot of inspiration. But NPR's Scott Simon points out that even though this novel is about a murder, it's quite funny. Chang told Simon that she just enjoyed writing it so much that humor became a natural part of it. This is an encore episode from February 2022.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy