Every Version of Crazy Rich Asians

The story that started with a family secret

Kevin Kwan grew up inside the world he wrote about. Born in Singapore to an old-money family, he emigrated to the United States as a teenager and spent years watching from a distance before turning his memories into a novel. Crazy Rich Asians, published in 2013, is the story of Rachel Chu, an American-born economics professor who travels to Singapore with her boyfriend Nick Young, only to discover that his family is staggeringly, dynastically wealthy. The book is part romantic comedy, part social satire, loaded with designer labels, ancestral mansions, and the particular cruelty that comes with inherited status.

Kwan followed it with two sequels, China Rich Girlfriend (2015) and Rich People Problems (2017), expanding the universe into Shanghai and Hong Kong. The trilogy became a publishing sensation and, in 2018, Jon M. Chu adapted the first novel into a film that became the highest-grossing romantic comedy in the United States in a decade and the first Hollywood studio film with a predominantly Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club in 1993. A streaming series adaptation was announced and has been in development, though as of mid-2024 it has not yet aired. The story remains, for now, a novel trilogy and a single film, with more versions still in the works.