Sex and Vanity: A Novel

Kevin Kwan is an American author known for his satirical and humorous writings. Kwan was born in Singapore into an established Chinese Singaporean family. His great-grandfather was a founding director of the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation, and Queen Elizabeth II knighted his paternal grandfather for his philanthropic work. These facets of Kwan’s familial background emerge across Kwan’s novels. When Kwan was 11, he and his family immigrated to the United States, where he received his high school education, studied photography at Parsons School of Design in New York, and later wrote and worked for publications and companies, including Interview Magazine, Martha Stewart Living, Ted.com, the Museum of Modern Art, and The New York Times.

Kwan’s 2013 literary debut, Crazy Rich Asians, immediately established him as a respected humorist and satirist. Kwan developed the concept for this work of social commentary while spending time with his father before his death. Crazy Rich Asians began as a standalone short story titled “Singapore Bible Study,” which eventually grew into “a sprawling, multi-generational mock epic that centers on a clan of Singaporeans whose various factions gather from their respective lairs around the globe for a wedding that is the year’s most talked-about event among the international Chinese aristocracy” (Christensen, Lauren.