THE FAMILY CHAO
Lan Samantha Chang
Literatur Solasaldiak / Literary Circle Errenteriako Biblioteka 2022.10.19
LAN SAMANTHA CHANG
Lan Samantha Chang was born in Appleton, Wisconsin and attended college at Yale where she earned her bachelor's degree in East Asian Studies. She worked in publishing in New York City briefly before getting her MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and was a Wallace E. Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford. She is currently the Elizabeth M. Stanley Professor in the Arts at the University of Iowa and the Director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is the first woman, and the first Asian American, to hold that position. Chang's 1st book is a novella and short stories, titled Hunger (1998). The stories are set in the US and China, and they explore home, family, and loss. Her 1st novel, Inheritance (2004), is about a family torn apart by the Japanese invasion during World War II. Chang's 2nd novel, All Is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost (2011), follows two poets and their friendship as they explore the depths and costs of making art. Chang has received fellowships from MacDowell, the American Library in Paris, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
SELECTED WORKS · Hunger (1998) · Inheritance (2004) · All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost (2011) · The Family Chao (2022)
THE FAMILY CHAO The Family Chao (2022) is her fourth book and third novel and is published by the W. W. Norton & Company. It's not a strict retelling of The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, but there are some intentional parallels such as the three brothers, the relationship between them and their domineering father, a meeting at a holy place to try to deal with a monetary dispute.
REVIEWS - “The Family Chao is a riveting character-driven novel that delves
beautifully into human psychology; Dostoevsky himself would surely approve.” Ilana Masad in npr.org
- “Chang’s prose moves with the unfussy ease of a shark through water – for the longest time you are just enjoying your swim, soaking up the story.” Jonathan Lee for The Guardian
INTERESTING LINKS · The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang review – a tasty succession drama, The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/feb/10/the-familychaoby-lan-samantha-chang-review-a-tasty-successiondrama · 'The Family Chao' is a riveting story of identity and belonging, NPR. ORG: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/02/1077301464/the-familychaois-a-riveting-story-of-identity-and-family · Literary Podcast: https://elrefugiodepapel.com
· Our coordinator´s blog (ENG/ESP): https://donostiabookclub.blogspot.com