Singapore-born American novelist Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller, a major motion picture, and has been translated into more than 30 languages. In 2018, he even made it to Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people.
Kwan is back with his latest, Sex and Vanity, a comedy of manners set between two cultures that is seen as a tribute to E.M. Forsters’ A Room With a View and its Merchant-Ivory film adaptation.
As for the book’s plot, on her first morning on the jewel-like island of Capri, Lucie Churchill, the daughter of an American-born Chinese mother and a blue-blooded New York father, sets eyes on Mafiosi of sorts George Zao and instantly can’t stand him. She doesn’t like when he gallantly offers to trade hotel rooms with her so that she can view the Tyrrhenian Sea and she really can’t stand it when he kisses her in the darkness of the ancient ruins of a Roman villa.
Lucie has always sublimated the Asian side of herself and she adamantly denies having feelings for George but several years later, when George unexpectedly appears in East Hampton, where Lucie is weekending with her new fiance, she finds herself drawn to him again.
Sex and Vanity, like Kwan’s previous books, is a modern love story with a twist.