India, Jan. 25 -- Charles Yu is very interested in stories, both the stories we tell ourselves and the stories that are told to us, so let's start with a story about him.

Once upon a time, there was a boy born in Los Angeles to a Taiwanese mother and father. The boy spent his days watching "The Twilight Zone" reruns, playing Street Fighter II, reading "Choose Your Own Adventure" books and thinking about where he might fit in. When he grew up, he became a corporate lawyer.

The end.

Except, as with all good stories, there's more to the story than that.

The boy also wrote fiction, but not until he was an adult. He worked as a lawyer by day and wrote late into the night. He published three books, and his fourth, the novel "Interior Chinat...