Winner of an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
A Barack Obama Summer Reading Selection
Long-listed for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
An NPR Best Book of the Year
A Vogue Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Review Favorite Fiction of 2022 Selection
For years, the residents of Lake Haven, Wisconsin ignored the whispered troubles about the Chao family, if only to keep eating at the best restaurant in town. But when tyrannical patriarch Big Chao is found frozen to death in the family’s meat freezer, scandalous events force the community to turn its attention to the three Chao sons.
DAGOU, presupposed heir to the business.
MING, successful banker, determined to sever ties with Haven’s Asian community once and for all.
JAMES, naive college student, who is only just learning of his family’s past.
As the family’s dog mysteriously disappears, and Dagou “Dog Eater” Chao is held on trial for his father’s murder, the Chaos’ turbulent history spills into the public eye while a small town looks on in disbelief…
The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang
Lan Samantha Chang is the author of The Family Chao, winner of an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction. A twenty-fifth anniversary edition of her first collection, Hunger, will be reissued in September, 2023, by W.W. Norton & Company. She is also the author of the novels All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost and Inheritance, which won the PEN Open Book Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, and The Best American Short Stories. She's received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Academy in Berlin. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa, where she teaches at and directs the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.