After the global success of his flamboyant debut, the Singaporean novelist talks to Nosheen Iqbal about growing up with old money, living next to Bob Dylan in New York, and why publishing’s problems with diversity are no surprise
It’s difficult to square Kevin Kwan, modern master of high romp, with the dark and brooding personality he claims as his default setting. “I’m actually a very melancholy, serious person,” he says seriously. Sitting at his kitchen table on a video call, bright Los Angeles light blinking through the blinds, Kwan is keen to draw a firm line between the parodic glamour of his blockbuster novels and the “very tense, mordant introvert” he sees himself as in real life.
“It was such a surprise to my friends that I wrote Crazy Rich Asians,” he says. “They couldn’t believe this was the book I was writing because it’s not in my natural voice which, in terms of writing, is very surgical, very precise, very minimal, very devastating, you know?”
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