Charles Yu won the National Book Awards 2020 for Fiction

Charles Yu has won the National Book Award for Fiction for his novel Interior Chinatown, a deeply affecting and frequently hilarious book about race, assimilation and popular culture.

Written in the form of a screenplay, the novel follows an Asian American actor trapped in the background roles of “Generic Asian Man” while longing to graduate to “Kung Fu Guy”. It was published in November by Europa Editions in the UK and Pantheon Books in the US.

Announcing the award during a ceremony streamed online, the judges called it a “wonderfully inventive work”.

“By turns hilarious and flat-out heartbreaking, Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown is a bright, bold, gut punch of a novel,” their statement said.

Accepting the prize on camera, Yu appeared visibly surprised, laughing in disbelief. “I can’t feel anything in my body right now. I prepared nothing, which tells you about how realistic I thought this was,” he said, joking that the moment felt like a simulation.

“I will probably just stop talking now,” he added. “I’m going to go melt into a puddle right now.”

Europa publisher Eva Ferri, who acquired the novel, said: “We are beyond happy for this important recognition of Charles Yu’s marvellous work of fiction. A richly deserved win, it happens at a time when so many books struggle to find readers, and it inspires hope.”

The 71st National Book Awards ceremony was broadcast in full online, with the fiction announcement beginning roughly one minute and forty-five seconds into the recording.