“Who cares about a piece of jewelry? The dress you wear to a wedding? In his trilogy of novels about contemporary Asians, which began with 2013’s Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kwan makes these small things matter, not for their glitz but for what those choices reveal about our inner lives and histories.”

So says actress Constance Wu in her profile of Singaporean-American novelist Kevin Kwan  in Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2018.

Not bad for a man whose most famous works – Crazy Rich Asians, China Rich Girlfriend, Rich People Problems – are often filed in the romance section. Romantic fiction is typically aimed at women, and, as a genre, generally not very well-respected, but Kwan’s trilogy of biting satire has received critical acclaim. Kwan’s are the sort of books that writers and critics describe as Austen-esque. Translation: this is a romance novel I’m not embarrassed to admit I’ve read.

Crazy Rich Asians reads like an old-fashioned comedy of manners. There’s little doubt that protagonists Rachel Chu (played by Constance Wu in the upcoming film) and Nick Young, who are more Jane and Bingley than they are Lizzie and Darcy, will find a way to be together, his disapproving crazy-rich family be damned. There’s scheming, social-climbing rivals who try to woo Nick away, certainly, but he wants nothing to do with the inter-clan politics of good, better, best hierarchy of families that form his extended Singaporean circle. The book draws together two conflicting worlds: the pleasant life Rachel and Nick share as professors in New York, versus the shocking levels of wealth and decadence from which he hails. The latter is drawn from Kwan’s privileged background and yes, it smacks of opulence porn, but the characters he creates are, at least, very human. As The New York Times‘ lit critic, Janet Maslin, writes, “Mr. Kwan knows how to deliver guilty pleasures. He keeps the repartee nicely outrageous, the excess wretched and the details wickedly delectable.”

I’ve still to read China Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems, but I plan to do so – this trilogy could be the perfect end-of-summer binge read. With a movie version coming out this autumn, now is the perfect time to pick up the frothy books before school starts back with a vengeance.

Crazy Rich Asians is the first all-Asian Hollywood movie since The Joy Luck Club came out twenty-five years ago. Creators took a huge gamble, turning down potentially massive payouts from Netflix to opt for the traditional studio model with a full cinematic release. Multiple Hollywood studios passed on Crazy Rich Asians because the production team refused to make Rachel Chu white, rather than Chinese-American. What is, on the surface, another glittering tale of excess could help prove there’s an audience for big-budget movies that firstly, don’t revolve around white people, and secondly, revolve around Asian stories, as well as being meaningful to a lot of people.  As a fan of the book, I’m glad they made the decision to hold out to tell this story properly. The reviews coming in are positive so far, and I can’t wait to see how they’ve adapted it.