Willis Wu has no name until halfway through this novel; he is Generic Asian Man or sometimes Dead Asian Man, aspiring to be Kung Fu Guy, in a world shaped by Hollywood stereotypes of what roles Chinese or Japanese people can play. The reader is never quite sure whether we are on a movie or TV set or in the real world, but that’s exactly the point: Yu is describing what it is like when popular culture colonizes your mind. A fresh and fascinating way to tell this story, but the book really comes to life when fatherhood makes Wu break with his own misguided aspirations.