writing a book latex

Overleaf - LaTeX: Books and Dissertations

• Getting Started
• Creating a LaTeX Document in Overleaf
• Structuring and Formatting
• Lists, Tables, Images, and Labelling
• Mathematics in LaTeX
• Bibliographies and Citing
• Books and Dissertations
• Submitting from Overleaf

Getting started

To write a book or dissertation in LaTeX, it is recommended that you change your document class to book . By using the article class book , you can add chapters to your document.

Another document class that may be useful in writing longer documents with chapters is the report  class.

Adding chapters and table of contents

The ideal way to add chapters to your LaTeX document while writing a book is by creating a separate file for each chapter. These individual chapter files do not need a preamble. All you need to add at the beginning of each chapter file is the name of the chapter using the \chapter {..} command.

Using the \input {..} command in your root document (titled main.tex by default), you can add in your chapters.

You can further add a table of contents to your document using the \tableofcontents command. This command automatically uses the information entered for each chapter to generate a table of contents for your document. 

Other useful sections to add to your book or dissertation could be a list of tables or figures.

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• Last Updated: Mar 14, 2022 9:28 AM
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LaTeX Beginners Guide by Stefan Kottwitz

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Time for action – writing a book with chapters

We will start to write a book. At first, we shall choose a class, further we will use some filler text to work out the page layout.

• Create a new document with the following code: \documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{book} \usepackage[english]{babel} \usepackage{blindtext} \begin{document} \chapter{Exploring the page layout} In this chapter we will study the layout of pages. \section{Some filler text} \blindtext \section{A lot more filler text} More dummy text will follow. \subsection{Plenty of filler text} \blindtext[10] \end{document}

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Creating a Book with LaTeX

Writing a book is or dissertation is a big endeavor. An author has to spend thousands of hours to finish a good book, and most of this time is spend in front of the word processor. If you use a common word processor such as MS word, this may represent a huge amount of time fighting against formatting problems, instead of concentrating on your work.

This article describes the main advantages of creating a book or dissertation using LaTeX, instead of a traditional tool.

What You See Is What You Mean

Most traditional word processors use the what you see is what you get philosophy. While this may be a helpful method of creating small documents, such as fliers and letters, it is very inneficient way of composing long documents, such as a book. The reason is that WYSIWYG implies that you need to format each part of the document before it reaches the required level of presentation. In a long document, this can be tedious and error prone.

For example, suppose you want to apply a uniform formatting to a book. In a traditional word processing tool you most probably need to go through each chapter and change the pages and paragraphs as necessary. You may even do this once, but if another change is necessary it will become very painful to go through the whole document again just to do mechanical changes.

The LaTeX way

LaTeX uses the what you see is what you mean methodology. This means that you don't see the final output while typing the document, but you you determine the meaning of each part. For example, if you are creating a book, you will define sections using the command

The real look of the document is then determined by the style you will use. There are hundreds os styles for LaTeX documents that are available for free. Usually, changes are as simple as typing

Where to Start?

To start using LaTeX, you first need to download the software, which is usually free. For example, for Windows you can search for MikTex, a standard distribution of LaTeX for PCs.

Then, it helps to read a few introductory texts, such as Leslie Lamport's LaTeX: A Document Preparation System . You can also use the web as a great resource to learn about LaTeX. Also check other page about LaTeX at in4mationFlow.

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A template for writing a nice book with LaTeX

academic-templates/tex-book-template

Folders and files, repository files navigation, ℹ️ introduction.

The goal of this template is to provide a nice-looking book layout, easy to configure and fill in.

Here is an example preview for the table of content, and other main document items:

Here is an example preview for chapter items, including the chapter heading, summary and discussion pages:

Here is an example preview for appendix items, including the appendix heading with a mini table of content:

🗃️ Structure

The template is structured in the following way:

• main.tex : This is the main TeX file to be compiled. Here you can include chapters, parts and appendices and also configure some settings (e.g. printable version).
• appendices : This folder contains the appendices, one TeX file for each of them, to be included in main.tex .
• chapters : This folder contains the chapters, one TeX file for each of them, to be included in main.tex .
• figures : This folder is aimed to contain the figures (that is, the pictures to be captioned that are included in the list of figures).
• icons : This folder is aimed to contain icons that are used without captions, e.g. these included with special text boxes (like tip ).
• parts : This folder contains every part other than chapters or appendices (i.e. abstract, foreword, references, acronyms, ...), one TeX file for each of them, to be included in main.tex .
• styles : This folder contains the available styles. Most of the included one should not be edited.

This structure follows the same one as for this master thesis template .

This particular template features a style especially designed for publishing at Lambert Academic Publishing , style/lap-publishing-book.sty .

⚙️ Compilation

The compilation can easilly be configured in Texmaker by defining a Quick Build Command :

• Go to the menu Options

Select Configure Texmaker

Go to tab Quick Build

In the field User : (...) , replace the command with:

Then click OK

When editing the book with Texmaker :

• Open main.tex
• Select Define Current Document as "Master Document"
• Open main.idx for edition
• Click on Quick Build to compile

This will produce main.pdf with all the included chapters, parts and appendices.

📕 Making your book

Tuning parts.

This template includes multiple pre-filled (self-explanatory) part files of the dissertation, whose some are to be adapted and others should not be modified.

Parts that you should adapt:

• parts/abstract.tex
• parts/acknowledgements.tex
• parts/acronyms.tex
• parts/bibliography.bib
• parts/foreword.tex
• parts/glossary.tex

Parts that you should not adapt:

• parts/index.tex
• parts/lof.tex
• parts/references.tex
• parts/toc.tex

Adding chapters

This template has a particular layout for chapters. Each of them starts with a chapter cover page with:

• Above: the chapter title.
• On the left column: an upper and a lower paragraph.
• On the right column: the mini table of content for the chapter.

In LaTeX, this is structured like the following:

Once you have written your new chapter in chapters/my-chapter.tex , do not forget to include it in main.tex (insert a line \include{chapters/my-chapter} where relevant).

Adding appendices

This template also features a particular layout for appendices. As matters separated from the main thread, they do not have cover pages but a mini table of content as well.

⭐ Related Projects

You may also like these:

• TeX Cheat Sheet Template : A template for creating a nice cheat sheet with LaTeX.
• TeX Course Index Template : A template for writing a condensed course index leveraging LaTeX indexing.
• TeX Master Thesis Template : A template for writing a nice master thesis dissertation with LaTeX.
• TeX Poster Template : A template for creating a nice scientific poster with LaTeX.
• TeX Slideshow Template : A template for making a nice presentation with LaTeX.

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BibTeX entry type: book

• Example of a BibTeX book entry

• When to use the entry type book?

The book entry type is used to properly reference a book in BibTeX. You can use @book for any complete published work with a clearly defined publisher . In most cases, it is enough to provide the author, title, year, publisher, and address fields for BibTeX to generate a correct citation.

• Complete list of fields for a BibTeX article entry

Below we provide a list of required and optional fields for the book type. There are also some non-standard fields that are only supported by some citation styles.

• How to cite a chapter of a book?

Sometimes only a section of a book, such as a chapter, is used. If only a part of a book is used then a proper reference is typically accomplished using the inbook entry type. This is considered the recommended method.

• How to cite an electronic book (e-book)?

In this technologically evolving world we live in today, electronic versions of books (or e-books) are becoming ever the more commonplace. To cite a book you have read online, it is possible to include the url within the note’s field. In order for this to work, however, it is necessary to include the \usepackage{url} command within the your LaTeX file. See example:

The more commonplace method is to use the non-standard field “url”. It’s note supported by all BibTeX styles, but for those that do it is the best solution. To verify if a style supports the “url” field, click here.

• Writing a maths book in LaTeX

I recently decided to write a book, based in part on articles I have published here.

Writing a maths book presents particular challenges. It is likely to contains a lot of images, and even more formulas.

My book will probably contain hundreds of formulas. It is important to find a way of handling them that not only creates a result that looked good for the reader but also that allows me to work efficiently without being driven crazy by the writing process.

I ultimately chose to use LaTeX, but not before considering two alternatives - MS Word, or Markdown. I have used both these tools for other books, but they were software engineering books rather than maths books.

In this article, I will explain why I made the switch. But the main thing I want to do is demonstrate that LaTeX is actually quite easy to use. I will do that by presenting a minimal, very short book in LaTeX. It includes everything you need to know to create a decent-looking maths book that you wouldn't be ashamed to publish.

Of course, I am not saying this article contains absolutely everything you need to know to write a maths book in LaTeX. For example, you might want to make stylistic changes to give your book a bit of character - those are things you can experiment with as you go along.

But you will most be able to write most of your book, and it will look pretty good, using just the techniques described here. After that, adding a few bells and whistles as you need them will not be too daunting.

Why not MS Word?

I have used MS Word for over 30 years, so when I decided to write my first programming book it was the obvious choice. That book was mainly text, with a few listings (which were just more text, but in a monospaced font), and the odd diagram. Word was a very good fit for this task. I wrote the book in Word and then exported it as a PDF, no problem. To be honest, I had absolutely no idea if the book would even sell a single copy, so I wanted to keep things simple.

Since then, I have moved over to Markdown for everything. However, I did take another look at Word for creating my maths book, for a couple of reason. First, with a book that contains a lot of images, it is useful if you can "float" the images - that is, position them on the page where they fit nicely, even if that is not directly below the place they are referenced in the text. Word can do that. And, secondly, Word can handle complex formulas. At least in theory.

In practice, these Word features are fine for small documents, but when you have dozens of images and hundreds of formulas, the mouse-based interface gets tedious quite quickly. Dragging an image to a different page and then aligning it using a dialog box is quite time-consuming compared to just cutting and pasting text (in Markdown or LaTeX).

Creating formulas using a visual interface is also a bit tedious after a while. Word can accept LaTeX formulas, but I found the interface a bit quirky. After writing a couple of chapters, I decided it wasn't the tool for the job.

Why not Markdown?

I currently write all my articles and books in Markdown. If you are not familiar, Markdown is a plain text format that uses special characters to mark headings, bullet points, formatted text and so on. Here is a simple example:

There are also simple ways to create tables, code listings, hyperlinks, and embed images, among other features. The most common use of Markdown is for web content. It is easier to write Markdown than raw HTML, and then Markdown can be converted to HTML simply and predictably. You always get exactly what you would expect.

It is possible to create a book using Markdown, in fact I have done it several times. You can use a special Markdown processor (such as Pandoc) to convert Markdown to PDF. Pandoc can do things like automatic numbering of chapters. It can even do more advanced things like automatically numbering figures and allowing you to reference them from the text.

The problem is that Markdown wasn't designed to do these things, so the advanced rely on hacks. Essentially, you need to embed bits of LaTeX syntax in your Markdown document that are then used by Pandoc to create the document. Rather than doing that, for a complex book, it seemed better to just use LaTeX.

What about LaTeX?

LaTeX was designed for writing maths and scientific books, papers, and articles in general. It is the obvious choice. But doesn't it have a massive learning curve?

Well, it is a big, mature format with lots of features. But if you are familiar with Markdown you can pick it up pretty quickly. And the results are great, straight out of the box. For the remainder of this article, we will look at a simple LaTeX document.

Want to give it a try? The easiest way to get started is probably the Overleaf website (not an affiliate link). It is free for basic use and provides an editor where you can type in some LaTeX, hit the compile button and see the result. It is a great place to start.

When you are ready to tackle a bigger project the options are:

• Stick with the Overleaf free tier, you can do quite a lot with it.
• If a is too limiting, you can move to the paid tier (in my opinion it is slightly expensive for what it does, but if you just have a short document to write it might be the best option).
• Choose one of the many open-source software options. I am using TeXstudio which is free and open source. The GUI looks slightly dated, but it works just fine. There are lots of other alternatives too.

LaTeX example

Here is the LaTeX equivalent of the previous Markdown sample:

LaTeX is a bit wordier, for example, it uses \chapter rather than a simple hash character for first-level headings. But for this simple example, there is a one-to-one correspondence between Markdown and LaTeX implementations. It is no more complicated than Markdown.

LaTeX files are usually stored with a .tex extension, so this one might be called chapter-1.tex .

A full LaTeX document

LaTeX does require one extra thing. It needs a few extra lines at the start to define the type of document you wish to create. Since we are creating a PDF rather than an HTML, we need to define things such as the page size, the font we wish to use, etc.

It is common to use a separate LaTeX file to define the document, and then put each chapter in a separate LaTeX file that gets included in the main document. That is entirely optional, but it makes things easier to manage if you have a large document such as a book. Here is a basic document file:

The first line declares the document class, including the page size, font size and type of document. We will make a book with one-sided pages - this is suitable for PDF ebooks. We will use the default font, a serif font not dissimilar to Times Roman.

We then import a few packages using the \include statement. We set the input encoding to utf8, which is normally the best option (most modern text editors default to this encoding). The graphicx package is necessary when we add images to our book. The amsmath and amssymb packages provide support for maths formulas.

That's it! Our maths book is configured in just five lines. There are lots more options, but we have a perfectly good starting point for a basic maths book.

The \begin{document} and \end{document} block defines our document structure. We divide our document into three sections:

• Frontmatter contains things like the preface, foreword, and table of contents.
• Mainmatter contains the book chapters.
• Backmatter contains things like the glossary, index, and references.

The main difference is that the chapters in the mainmatter are automatically numbered - for example, chapter-1 which has the title Introduction will automatically be shown a *Chapter 1 Introduction", whereas the front- and backmatter chapters are left unnumbered. In addition, the frontmatter pages are numbered with Roman numerals, as is common in many books.

\tableofcontents adds a table of contents, generated automatically from the book's contents.

The include statements pull in the book content. For example \include{chapter-1} pulls in chapter-1.tex . By default, LaTeX expects the included files to be in the same folder as the main file, although you can add a path to the include statement if the files are somewhere else.

That is our basic book definition. We just need to write all the chapters (adding extra include statements if required for extra chapters) and compile them into a PDF. If you are using Overleaf you just need to hit the compile button, and you will see a preview on the right-hand side of the screen.

Adding images

How do we add images? It is quite easy and similar to Markdown

The simplest way to add an image is

However, you will normally want to control the size of the image. There are various ways of doing that, but this is quite a good method:

This will scale the image so that it has a width of half the printed part of the page. The image height will be scaled by the same amount so the aspect ratio remains the same. You can vary the width for different images, of course.

This might be adequate for a web page, but typically in a book, you will want to give the image a caption and a figure number so you can reference it in the text. You can do that like this:

Here we have created a figure that includes the image. We have added a caption The first image . We have also added a label fig:first-image . LaTeX will automatically give the figure a number, for example, if this was the first image in chapter 3 it would be numbered 3.1.

The figure will appear with a caption Figure 3.1: The first image . If we need to reference the figure from our text we can use \ref{fig:first-image} , which will be replaced with 3.1. And, of course, as we add figures the numbering will automatically be adjusted.

We have also added an optional \centering which centres the image horizontally.

Finally, notice the [h] parameter of the \begin{figure} block. This tells LaTeX to attempt to put the image on the page where the figure statement is. However, LaTeX will adjust the position depending on the page break. It will generally do a decent job of placing the image sensibly.

Although this might seem like quite a lot of text to place one image, bear im mind that it is almost identical for every image. All you need to do is copy and paste, then change the filename, caption and label text (and possibly the width if needed).

Adding math formulas

LaTeX has a rich notation for maths formulas. It can create pretty much any formula you can imagine.

If you have ever added formulas to a web page using MathJax, you will have used LaTeX Maths. We will look at a couple of examples here, but there are numerous examples online for more complex formulas, including a few sites where you can build formulas graphically and then obtain the LaTeX version.

There are two maths modes in LaTeX:

Inline maths can be used in any text. For example, we could use inline maths in a figure caption:

If you are starting any kind of maths writing project, from a paper to a complete book, LaTeX deserves a look. It is not really any more difficult than Markdown, and a whole lot less frustrating than trying to work with Word.

There is far, far more to LaTeX than I have included here. There are entire books written about LaTeX. But this article is probably 90% of what you will need to create a nice-looking maths book in LaTeX. You might want to add tweaks to make it your own, but you can do that as you go along. Starting on the right course is the most important thing.

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Why do books have chapters? How writing changed from antiquity to children's books and streaming

Nicholas Dames remembers the first time he really got thinking about a very obvious but largely invisible writing device.

It was around two decades ago, when he was completing a PhD in English and American literature.

"A friend of mine, who was not an academic, over drinks one night, just blurted out to me, 'why do novels have chapters?'," the Columbia University humanities professor tells ABC RN's Late Night Live .

"I realised I hadn't the faintest clue how to answer that question. It was one of those, 'why is the sky blue' questions."

In the years that followed, Professor Dames returned to this question again and again, so he decided to explore the history of the chapter.

The topic may sound deeply academic, but it's not all laborious details about medieval tomes.

At the heart of this history is how we tell stories.

And from a child's development to an evening on the couch watching Netflix, the chapter affects our lives in many unnoticed ways.

Chapter 1: A long history

For much of human history, texts were not divided into sections. They were words upon words upon words.

The earliest chaptered text that Professor Dames found was a Roman legal tablet from Urbino, dating back to the second century BCE.

The tablet was announcing a new law, explains Professor Dames, who's written the book The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the 21st Century.

"It was a continuous law, but the law was segmented and those segments had brief titles," he says.

This is how early chapters were used — to organise informational texts on topics like law, medicine or language, to "tell readers where to look for the information they were seeking".

For much of antiquity, the most common type of text was the scroll. And these sometimes came with a chapter list, in an accompanying, smaller scroll.

Chapter 2: Different ways of writing

Professor Dames' research considered two millennia of Western literary history, which meant he also saw how the written word has evolved.

Today's reader would likely find ancient texts totally unrecognisable.

For example, up until the ninth century, written lines were continuous chains of letters with no breaks between the words.

"To try to get one's mind around how one read without the separation of words, it's a truly tricky task, but they seem to have done it without much difficulty," Professor Dames says.

His research shows that "the history of text is a history of ways in which we segment text".

"We currently live in a regime where text is very elaborately segmented, but that wouldn't have been the case 2,000 years ago," he says.

Chapter 3: Making a living by making chapters

Over much of its history, chaptering was not the responsibility of writers, but of editors.

This was called "capitulation".

"It was an ancient technique, and that extends well into medieval Europe, for taking a text that you have not written, a text that pre-exists you and …. dividing it in a way that makes sense," Professor Dames explains.

"It was an intellectual labour that was performed by scholars, particularly within the Roman Empire [and also] by medieval monks. It was a very, very long-lasting form of intellectual labour."

Depending on the individual editor, a book could be divided up in countless different ways.

Chapter 4: Dividing the Bible

Professor Dames says perhaps the "most visceral" chapter in the history of chapters is the Christian Gospels.

The Gospels were originally written without chapters, he explains.

But over the years, mainly between the fourth century and the 13th century, they were divided up in innumerable ways.

Some scholars chopped up the Gospels into extremely tiny chapters, others into larger ones.

It got confusing. For example, chapter 12 in the Gospel of John could mean one thing in one version and a very different thing in another. 

This changed in the early 13th century.

Although unconfirmed, it's thought that Stephen Langton, a theologian at the University of Paris, who later became the Archbishop of Canterbury, came up with today's Gospel chapters around 1210-1220.

Another theory is that this chaptering system came from a series of religious institutions in England at this time.

The idea was to create chapters that were roughly of equivalent size, but that also made sense in the narrative.

But this form of chapters was "greeted with a bit of scepticism at the time … and continued to be greeted with scepticism well into the 18th century", Professor Dames says.

Chapter 5: Anti-chapters

Not everyone was thrilled that chapters were standard parts of texts.

In the 17th century, English philosopher John Locke was a critic of Bible chapters. In fact, he thought it shouldn't have been done at all, Professor Dames says.

"He thought that the chapter break disturbs the progression of thought as you read.

"[Locke believed] one should read in an uninterrupted fashion, following what he called a chain of argument from start to finish, and chapters were a disastrous way to address the text."

Chapter 6: Marking time

Next up is a big shift: The use of chapters moved into the realm of the writers themselves.

Chapters became part of the author's writing process, and stories were written with chapters in mind.

As the modern novel emerged in 17th and 18th century Europe, chapters served as timing devices, part of a story's rhythm.

"Authors made the decisions — to cut chapters short, or to sculpt them in certain ways," Professor Dames says.

Chapters became "a really wonderful place for authors, or one could say narrators, to directly address the reader".

"To remind the reader of their ability to leave or to take a break. To solicit the reader's attention. To apologise for taking too much of the reader's time. To establish a kind of communicative relation with the reader."

Chapter 7: Chapters in children's development

Professor Dames says that today, one marker of a child's development is the transition from picture books to "chapter books".

Chapter books are "a big developmental step in the experience of children with narrative … [they are] what children read when they are first really maturing into literacy".

This transition is analogous with "what psychologists call 'object permanence' — the moment in infancy when a child realises that just because you've hidden an object, it still exists".

"A chapter works that way, in terms of time, for children," he says.

"It says that just because the story has paused, you can resume it … It tells children that they are allowed to leave and re-enter narratives."

Chapter 8: Streaming

Technological developments over recent decades have seen the idea of chapters cross over into other ways of storytelling.

Chapters have become part of long-form TV or streaming shows, with episodes carefully curated into various segments, often using reintroductions and cliffhangers.

"It means that these narratives can sort of filter into our lives … when we aren't consuming fiction, we can let the experience diffuse into our day," he says.

For example, this year's FX series Shōgun started each episode with a written title, and then the drama unfolded in a fairly self-contained way.

Chapters are "so common and so flexible, and so unformalised that they can always be reinvented," Professor Dames says.

"So I think that in some sense, [chapters] are always going to be with us." 

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Interview highlights

Stephen king's new story took him 45 years to write.

Mary Louise Kelly

Courtney Dorning

Stephen King says finishing one of his stories decades after he started it felt like "calling into a canyon of time." Francois Mori/AP hide caption

Stephen King says finishing one of his stories decades after he started it felt like "calling into a canyon of time."

Stephen King is out with a new collection of short stories.

As you might expect from the reigning King of Horror, some are terrifying. Some are creepy. Others are laugh-out-loud funny. And one of them took him 45 years to write.

The book is a collection of 12 stories, called You Like it Darker .

Stephen King's legacy of horror

Over the course of his decades-long career as a writer, King has learned there's no taking a story too far.

"I found out – to sort of my delight and sort of my horror – that you can't really gross out the American public," King told NPR.

He spoke with All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly about the book, destiny and getting older.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Mary Louise Kelly: I want to start by asking you about the story, The Answer Man . You began it when you were 30. You finished it when you were 75. What the heck happened?

Stephen King: Well, I lost it. What happens with me is I will write stories and they don't always get done. And the ones that don't get done go in a drawer and I forget all about them. And about five years ago, these people started to collect all the stuff that was finished and all this stuff that was unfinished and put it in an archive. They were going through everything – desk drawers, wastebaskets underneath the desk, every place. I'm not exactly a very organized person. My nephew John Leonard found this particular story, which was written in the U.N. Plaza Hotel back in the '70s, I think. And he said, "You know, this is pretty good. You really ought to finish this." And I read it and I said, "You know, I think I know how to finish it now." So I did.

Kelly: Well give people a taste. The first six or so pages that you had written back in the hotel, it becomes a 50-page story. What was it that you decided was worth returning to?

King: Well, I like the concept: This young man is driving along, and he's trying to figure out whether or not he should join his parents' white shoe law firm in Boston, or whether he should strike out on his own. And he finds this man on the road who calls himself the Answer Man. And he says, "I will answer three of your questions for $25, and you have 5 minutes to ask these questions." So I thought to myself, I'm going to write this story in three acts. One while the questioner is young, and one when he's middle aged, and one when he's old. The question that I ask myself is: "Do you want to know what happens in the future or not?"

Kelly: This story, like many of your stories, is about destiny – whether some things are meant to happen no matter what we do, no matter what choices we make. Do you believe that's true?

King: The answer is I don't know. When I write stories, I write to find out what I really think. And I don't think there's any real answer to that question.

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Kelly: You do describe in the afterword of the book that going back in your seventies to complete a story you had begun as a young man gave you, and I'll quote your words, "The oddest sense of calling into a canyon of time." Can you explain what that means?

King: Well, you listen for the echo to come back. When I was a young man, I had a young man's ideas about The Answer Man . But now, as a man who has reached, let us say, a certain age, I'm forced to write from experience and just an idea of what it might be like to be an old man. So yeah, it felt to me like yelling and then waiting for the echo to come back all these years later.

Kelly: Are there subjects you shy away from, where you think about it and think, "You know what, that might be one step too creepy, too weird?"

King: I had one novel called Pet Cemetery that I wrote and put in a drawer because I thought, "Nobody will want to read this. This is just too awful." I wanted to write it to see what would happen, but I didn't think I would publish it. And I got into a contractual bind, and I needed to do a book with my old company. And so I did. And I found out – sort of to my delight and sort of to my horror – that you can't really gross out the American public. You can't go too far.

Kelly: It was a huge bestseller, as I recall.

King: Yeah, it's a bestseller and it was a movie. And yeah, the same thing is true with It , about the killer clown who preys on children

Kelly: Who still haunts my nightmares, I have to tell you. You've written how many books at this point?

King: I don't know.

King: Really? In our recent coverage of you, we've said everything from 50 to 70.

King: I think it's probably around 70, but I don't keep any count. I remember thinking as a kid that it would be a really fine lifetime to be able to write 100 novels.

Kelly: Oh my gosh. Well you sound like you're still having a lot of fun, so I hope you have quite a few more novels for us to come.

King: That'd be good.

• Stephen King
• Short stories

Shedding his Lemony Snicket persona, Daniel Handler lets off some steam

In his new book, “And Then? And Then? What Else?,” the author of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” explores the joys, frustrations and ironies of the writing life.

Writers lead messy lives, constantly condemned to days of lousy first drafts, failed ideas and chronic misstatements. Daniel Handler feels this deeply throughout his kinda-sorta memoir, “ And Then? And Then? What Else? ” Eventually it reaches a boiling point. Late in the book he abandons his quirky-cool demeanor — he’s best known as Lemony Snicket, author of the offbeat children’s books “A Series of Unfortunate Events” — and lets fly with an f-bomb-laden rant about cancel culture and the pressure writers feel to be everything to everyone.

It’s a fierce cri de coeur at a time when books — especially kids’ books — are targeted on the right and writers who misstep on the inclusivity front get targeted on the left. (Oddly, Handler doesn’t mention his own moment as a near-cancelee. Onstage while emceeing the 2014 National Book Awards, he directed a racist watermelon joke at Black author Jacqueline Woodson ; after a social media pile-on, he apologized.) Handler isn’t interested in wading far into the politics of writing today — elsewhere his prose tends toward the gentle, sprightly and personal. Still, it’s not hard to see why he made room for the tirade: He wants to encourage you to give up seeking easy answers about who writers are and how writing works.

“And Then?” — the title comes from a poem by Baudelaire, the namesake of the “Unfortunate Events” siblings — doesn’t have a subtitle to explain itself. But a good one might be “A Memoir of Writerly Confusions.” For Handler, the writing life means forever stepping into frustration and strange ironies. He recalls writing nine drafts for the “Unfortunate Events” movie before being fired from the job — and then being asked to consult on the script, without pay. “Previously I had considered these people innocent,” he says of the moviemakers, “and then maybe dumb, and then maybe a pack of vicious demons. I understood, too, that they were, at least obliquely, the reason I owned a house.”

Plainly, embracing the mess has made him a success: He recalls how some young Lemony Snicket fans were so excited to see him at readings that “bookstores began to have contingency plans for when a child, excited to meet me, threw up.” (The life of a reader can get messy, too.) So understandably, he’s fully embraced the idea of mess-as-process, that successful writing means wrestling with demons. On that front, he’s had a few. In one chapter, he recalls that during his college years he was stalked by visions of malevolent figures, accompanied by seizures that briefly sent him to a psych ward. Recovery wasn’t conquering those visions but making a kind of peace with them: “I still, to this day, see these figures, frequently but not frighteningly, not anymore,” he writes.

That experience has fueled a sensibility in which he does best when he’s open to strangeness. He takes inspiration from the melodrama of opera but also finds joy and insight in tacky kitsch like “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.” His polestars as an artist are art-film figures like Guy Maddin, who tweaks silent-film conventions, and, most obviously, Edward Gorey, whose not-for-kids-but-really-they-are illustrated stories inspired the Lemony Snicket books’ mordant brilliance. Still, he keeps his heroes at arm’s length: Recalling sending Gorey a fan note, he writes: “I never heard back from Gorey, but shortly afterward he died. I like to think that I killed him.”

Lines like that reflect the sort of tone we want from writer’s guides — intimate, self-deprecating. But these days, we also want them to be practical. The most prominent modern example remains Stephen King’s memoir “On Writing,” and countless others since have borrowed its tone and intention. George Saunders’s “A Swim in the Pond in the Rain” invites us to study classic Russian short stories. In “Essays One,” Lydia Davis brilliantly dismantles her own stories like a car engine. Handler’s book belongs in that company, but he’s skeptical of how much he can offer in terms of practical tips: Whenever he hears the word “process,” he writes, “I wish I could lay my head down on a table.”

Yet there are moments when Handler warms to the role of advice giver. Like every author, he encourages you to read a lot — he recalls the teacher who introduced him to Muriel Spark, the perfect writer for him at just the right time. And he encourages writers to abandon bespoke notebooks and keep it simple; he describes his (yes) process for gathering and reshuffling notes into stories, and how he forgives his sloppy drafts. He’s taken a lesson from his occasional musical collaborator, Magnetic Fields frontman Stephin Merritt, who’s “a devout corraller of happy accidents, encouraging musicians to try the wrong approach, the bonkers note, anything to fill the blanks.”

But all this — Spark, Gorey, B-movies, weird troubling figures in the corner of your eye — doesn’t solve the problem of producing good writing. As for what does, Handler recalls working on a script for a director who sent his draft back pockmarked with the letters “DB,” short for “do better.” Handler was infuriated at the vague note, but he took the lesson: “Now I write it in my own margins all the time, shorthand for I don’t know what’s wrong here but it needs to improve. I want to write better, but I usually don’t know how. Nobody does, really.” For Handler, knowing there’s no right way to do it is the most liberating advice of all.

Mark Athitakis is a critic in Phoenix and the author of “ The New Midwest .”

And Then? And Then? What Else?

By Daniel Handler

Liveright. 240 pp. $26.99

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Greg Iles almost died writing his latest book: ‘This might be the last thing I ever do’

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On the Shelf

Southern Man

By Greg Iles William Morrow & Company: 976 pages, $36 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org , whose fees support independent bookstores

Penn Cage leads a dramatic life — he’s a Houston prosecutor turned novelist turned mayor of his hometown of Natchez, Miss.

When his father, a beloved local doctor, was charged with murdering his former nurse — who was his long-ago lover — and went on the run, Cage dug for the truth, finding links to 1960s lynchings by a vicious KKK offshoot and to contemporary corruption and racism. Cage ultimately went outside the law to destroy the criminals; his fiancée and others were killed along the way.

More recently, while Cage was living in nearby Bienville, his daughter was shot and wounded during a rap concert and soon after, the mayor, who was Black, gay and relatively progressive, was murdered in cold blood. As racial tensions consumed the town, an ambitious war hero turned radio host named Robert E. Lee White caught Cage’s attention as he tried to capitalize on the chaotic situation. Again, Cage survived shootouts and broke the law for the sake of justice.

Cage’s saga exists only in Greg Iles’ bestselling books, most famously his 2,300-page “Natchez Burning” trilogy and now his latest, “Southern Man,” which runs nearly a thousand pages itself. They’re thrillers with the stakes raised by Iles’ exploration of the racism that has long ruled the South and haunted the nation.

But Iles’ own life story is novel-worthy. It’s an epic with twists and turns and his own brushes with death.

After nearly a decade playing guitar in the band Frankly Scarlet, Iles turned to fiction, finding success in the 1990s with a pair of World War II thrillers. Then, at 36, a routine exam left him staring death in the face. He had myeloma, at the time a “rapid death sentence,” he explained in a video interview from his Natchez home.

Iles was asymptomatic and the rare patient for whom the disease “smoldered” for decades. Living with the disease and keeping it secret to protect his career “was like walking in permanent shadow, with the hawk of mortality hovering over your shoulder day and night.”

He turned down opportunities, prioritizing for his family the financial security of his proven career. “The cancer affected every decision I made,” he says. “I wrote more commercial books than I would have and wrote much faster than I might have otherwise.”

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Iles’ life changed again during “Natchez Burning.”

He’d written about Natchez in “The Quiet Game” in 1999, but looked back with “regrets,” having fallen victim to the nostalgic blinders of many white Southern writers. “I’m embarrassed by my view of the world then,” he confesses.

Reading the investigative journalism of Stanley Nelson, editor of the Concordia Sentinel in nearby Ferriday, La., Iles learned about the lynchings that happened in and around Natchez in the 1960s.

Nelson drove Iles around the region, sharing research and stories. “Greg took the issues and did a masterful job of exploring attitudes about race in his fiction with characters that can emotionally draw people in and get them to understand,” said Nelson, who was immortalized as reporter Henry Sexton in “Natchez Burning.”

Indeed, Iles says he uses his genre skills for a cause. “I’m writing for a white audience about a subject most would prefer not to think about but they can be seduced into reading a thriller,” he says.

Scott Turow, who became friends with Iles while performing in the Rock Bottom Remainders, their band that also features authors including Dave Barry, Amy Tan and Stephen King, says Iles reminds him of King for “his ability to turn serious matter into popular fiction.”

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The frankness and intensity in Iles’ books are essential to his personality too, Turow adds. Iles is charming and affable, a natural storyteller with a reflective side. But he grows impassioned while recounting the creation of the trilogy.

The more he learned about those real-life cold cases and the surviving killers, the more he wrote. Finally, he told his publisher this story needed three books. The answer was no. One day in 2011, Iles was driving while contemplating this conundrum.

Then everything went black.

After eight days in a medically induced coma, Iles awoke to learn a truck had hit his car. “I was missing my right leg below the knee, had a patched aorta and more broken bones than I can remember.”

This brush with mortality — a year after the death of his father, who was a doctor whom he admired greatly — made Iles determined to honor his personal vision. He again told his publisher he needed a trilogy, period.

The publishing house walked away, leaving him with “frightening” debt. He soon landed a new deal with HarperCollins and wrote relentlessly while recovering. When “in the flow,” Iles writes for 16, 24 or even 30-hour stretches. While going hard and fast, he also is “granular,” blending historical facts, people and places with fictional ones.

His instincts were spot on. The three books, released in 2014, 2015 and 2017, climbed bestseller lists. Still, he says, there was always backlash from some white readers. He expects even more for “Southern Man,” which was fueled by his outrage at the “the animus that Donald Trump released.”

He was so angry that the first draft of “Southern Man” was “virtually unreadable.” Upon stumbling on King’s “The Dead Zone” on TV, he had an epiphany: his novel needed a character like King’s Greg Stillson, a dangerously populist politician. So Iles introduced Robert E. Lee White as a “dark mirror of Penn Cage,” a conservative, but pro-choice and anti-Trump, third-party candidate for 2024.

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White is more complex than Iles’ earlier antagonists, unnervingly confident in his own vision and in his belief that he can manipulate the public and boost his campaign without losing control of events.

But as Iles resumed writing, a new bombshell landed. The myeloma had “switched on” and his future was suddenly and immediately imperiled. Although his mother had just died in October 2020 from the same cancer, science had progressed tremendously since his original diagnosis, and he immediately began chemotherapy en route to a stem cell transplant.

Unsurprisingly, he couldn’t stop writing. “I couldn’t bear to go into such serious treatment and possibly never finish,” he admits. Chemotherapy kept him alive as he completed the novel and prepared for the stem cell treatment. Thinking he’d be done within two months, he says, “I worked harder than ever before.”

Instead, the book took two more years. That’s partly because writing Iles-style — those 20-hour marathons — during chemo nearly killed him. “I was hospitalized three separate times for extensive periods,” he says, and constantly battled chemo “brain fog.”

The process, and the book, ran so long because Iles understood “this might be the last thing I ever do” and because he saw America as equally endangered, he wanted to commit everything on his mind to the page.

Iles poured more of himself into Cage: his protagonist lost part of a leg in a similar car wreck and was now battling myeloma. In real life, treatment has left Iles diabetic and 40 pounds overweight. His chemo stopped working but his doctor found a successful new drug combination and he’s awaiting a stem cell transplant. “I’m hopeful and optimistic,” he says.

‘Harry Potter’ set at an HBCU? LaDarrion Williams wrote the book he always wanted to read

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May 3, 2024

His optimism doesn’t extend to American society. While writing he realized many white Americans only want the democracy they grew up with, “where they sat atop the pyramid,” he says. “Otherwise, they’ll exchange democracy for autocracy in a flash.”

He worries that, as in the novel, white fear and panic puts us “on a ticking clock to real violence between now and November.”

Iles hopes the novel helps people move beyond William Faulkner’s notion that “the past is never dead.” “It’s incumbent upon us to outgrow and to transcend the past,” he says.

In “Southern Man” he gives Black characters more “page time.” The trilogy lacked significant Black characters until the third book, in part because he was focused on prying open white readers’ eyes but also because “I knew I had nothing to teach Black readers” about racism.

He remains wary of presuming to write from a Black person’s perspective, but “Southern Man” has three Black characters playing crucial roles; they even call out Cage on the limits of his understanding and allyship. He hopes their addition helps shape readers’ reactions.

“If I can make white readers see America — even a little bit — through a Black character’s eyes, we have a better chance of finding common ground,” Iles says.

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April 15, 2024

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Aaron Judge continues to put on show for the ages, rewriting another page in record book

SAN DIEGO — The New York Yankees have the best seats in the world to watch the greatest show in baseball.

They get to interact with the star before he sets foot on stage, occasionally chat with him during the performance, gawk at what they’re seeing, and pinch themselves afterwards trying to fathom the greatness they’re witnessing.

Aaron Judge, who brought you the single-season American League home run record two years ago, is now putting on one of the greatest seasons in Yankee history.

He hit another home run in the first inning Saturday night, hit another double three innings later, and then left everyone trying to describe just what they’re seeing after the Yankees’ 4-1 victory over the San Diego Padres .

Judge became the first player in baseball history to hit 11 doubles and 12 homers in a 20-game span.

Follow every MLB game: Latest MLB scores, stats, schedules and standings.

Judge is hitting .455 with a .569 OPS and 1.182 slugging percentage in his last 13 games.

Judge has homered in four consecutive games.

Judge is tied for the major-league lead with 17 home runs.

Judge is leading the major leagues with a .637 slugging percentage and 1.050 OPS.

And the Yankees’ 37-17 record is the best in the American League and their third-best start since 1956.

"I mean, it’s been unbelievable," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. "What Aaron’s doing is what the greats do from time to time.

"I’ve witnessed a lot of amazing baseball from Aaron Judge over the last six or seven years, so anytime he does something that’s a first or unique or whatever adjective you want to put on it, that frankly doesn’t surprise me because I know how good he is.

"When he gets locked it, it’s just different."

Judge’s exploits have been so ridiculous this month that Yankees left fielder Alex Verdugo − who bats behind Judge − is worried that he’s going to pull a calf muscle jumping up and high-fiving Judge after his homers.

When asked how to describe Judge’s 20-game tear, Verdugo said, "That’s my season."

Verdugo, teammates for the first time this season with Judge, stood back and laughed.

"Playing against him throughout the whole course of my career," Verdugo said, "this is what I was accustomed to seeing. Seeing him do it every day, and obviously the slow start to how hot he’s been now, it’s crazy, it’s just crazy.

"He’s a different animal, and it’s somebody that he just needs to touch it, and the ball jumps off just way different than other guys."

Oh, yeah, about that slow start.

Judge was hitting just .179 with three homers, 11 RBI and a .682 OPS the first 21 games of the season. His 27 strikeouts were the second-most in the American League.

And was getting booed at Yankee Stadium.

Yankees starter Nestor Cortes was incensed at the crowd reaction saying after a game, “I feel like he’s done a lot for this team, a lot for this organization. He’s going to come out (of this). It’s just a matter of time. He’s going to be Aaron Judge."

Well, here we are one month later, and look who’s getting the last laugh?

"It’s part of it," Judge said. "You know it’s a long season. There’s going to be bumps and bruises, and good times and bad times.

"But I can’t get caught up in what people are saying or what they’re not saying. I’ve got a job to do, and especially in New York, you’ve got to show up every single day. I’ve got a job to do, and especially in New York, you’ve got to show up every single day.

"And I wasn’t showing up so I understand there was a lot of questions, and now it’s past us."

Judge is making a mockery out of the Yankees’ record book the way he’s performing, joining Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig by hitting at least 18 doubles and 17 homers in the Yankees’ first 54 games.

"Got a lot of work to do, a lot of games to play, so we got to keep working," Judge said. "I don’t look at the past. The most important thing is just staying focused and trying to improve a little bit each day."

That’s Judge.

Let everyone else gush, praise and adore him.

"We’re watching greatness," said Yankees starter Marcus Stroman, who pitched six shutout innings, yielding just three hits. "Sometimes you can take it for granted to be honest, but this something I’ll be sitting with my grandkids at some point and saying I got to play with Aaron Judge."

Judge hears the compliments, shrugs, and refuses to bask in his accomplishments.

He’s tearing it up, the Yankees are rolling, and he refuses to be satisfied until he’s holding that World Series trophy.

"The biggest thing he’s the same guy no matter what," Verdugo said, "so it’s awesome to see. He’s special man.

"He’s a captain for a reason. He got paid ($360 million) for what he did for a reason. He’s just somebody that goes about everything the right way. Guys love him, whether you’re on his team or he’s on the opposing team.

"He’s the superstar that I feel a lot of kids and a lot of people should try to model their game after. If it’s not their game, at least the personality and person."

For now, the Yankees will sit back, enjoy the show, and ride the big man’s shoulders, perhaps all of the way through October.

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Bibliography management in LaTeX

• 1 Introduction
• 2 Basic usage
• 3 The bibliography file
• 4 Customizing the bibliography
• 5 Adding the bibliography in the table of contents
• 6 Reference guide
• 7 Further reading

Introduction

When it comes to bibliography-management packages, there are three main options in LaTeX: bibtex , natbib and biblatex .

This article explains how to use the biblatex package, to manage and format the bibliography in a LaTeX document. biblatex is a modern option for processing bibliography information, provides an easier and more flexible interface and a better language localization than the other two options.

A minimal working example of the biblatex package is shown below:

There are four bibliography-related commands in this example:

Overleaf provides several templates with pre-defined styles to manage bibliographies. See this link .  Open an example of the biblatex package in Overleaf

Basic usage

Several parameters can be passed to the package import command, as in the following example:

Some extra options, inside brackets and comma-separated, are added when importing biblatex :

The rest of the commands were explained in the introduction .

 Open a more complete biblatex example in Overleaf

The bibliography file

The bibliography files must have the standard bibtex syntax

This file contains records in a special format; for instance, the first bibliographic reference is defined by:

The information in this file can later be printed and referenced within a L a T e X document, as shown in the previous sections, with the command \addbibresource{sample.bib} . Not all the information in the .bib file will be displayed, it depends on the bibliography style set in the document.

Customizing the bibliography

Biblatex allows high customization of the bibliography section with little effort. It was mentioned that several citation styles and bibliography styles are available, and you can also create new ones. Another customization option is to change the default title of the bibliography section.

The additional parameter title={Whole bibliography} passed inside brackets to the command \printbibliography is the one that changes the title.

The bibliography can also be subdivided into sections based on different filters, for instance: print only references from the same author, the same journal or similar title. Below an example.

Here, the bibliography is divided in 4 sections. The syntax of the commands used here is explained below:

Adding the bibliography in the table of contents

For the bibliography the be printed in the table of contents an extra option must be passed to \printbibliography

A section and a subsection are added to the table of contents:

• In the first case, adding heading=bibintoc adds the title to the table of contents as an unnumbered chapter if possible or as an unnumbered section otherwise.
• The second case is heading=subbibintoc that adds the title as a second level entry in the table of contents, in this example as a subsection nested in "Whole bibliography".

Reference guide

Supported entry types

Supported entry fields (The printed information depends on the bibliography style)

Bibliography sorting options

For detailed information on these entries and options, see the package documentation.

Further reading

For more information see

• Biblatex bibliography styles
• Biblatex citation styles
• Bibliography management with natbib
• Bibliography management with bibtex
• Creating and Managing Bibliographies with BibTeX on Overleaf
• Biblatex package documentation
• International language support
• Table of contents
• Management in a large project
• Multi-file LaTeX projects
• Documentation Home
• Learn LaTeX in 30 minutes

Overleaf guides

• Creating a document in Overleaf
• Uploading a project
• Copying a project
• Creating a project from a template
• Using the Overleaf project menu
• Including images in Overleaf
• Exporting your work from Overleaf
• Working offline in Overleaf
• Using Track Changes in Overleaf
• Using bibliographies in Overleaf
• Sharing your work with others
• Using the History feature
• Debugging Compilation timeout errors
• How-to guides
• Guide to Overleaf’s premium features

LaTeX Basics

• Creating your first LaTeX document
• Choosing a LaTeX Compiler
• Paragraphs and new lines
• Bold, italics and underlining

Mathematics

• Mathematical expressions
• Subscripts and superscripts
• Brackets and Parentheses
• Fractions and Binomials
• Aligning equations
• Spacing in math mode
• Integrals, sums and limits
• Display style in math mode
• List of Greek letters and math symbols
• Mathematical fonts
• Using the Symbol Palette in Overleaf

Figures and tables

• Inserting Images
• Positioning Images and Tables
• Lists of Tables and Figures
• Drawing Diagrams Directly in LaTeX
• TikZ package

References and Citations

• Bibliography management with biblatex
• Bibtex bibliography styles
• Natbib bibliography styles
• Natbib citation styles
• Multilingual typesetting on Overleaf using polyglossia and fontspec
• Multilingual typesetting on Overleaf using babel and fontspec
• Quotations and quotation marks

Document structure

• Sections and chapters
• Cross referencing sections, equations and floats
• Nomenclatures
• Lengths in L a T e X
• Headers and footers
• Page numbering
• Paragraph formatting
• Line breaks and blank spaces
• Text alignment
• Page size and margins
• Single sided and double sided documents
• Multiple columns
• Code listing
• Code Highlighting with minted
• Using colours in LaTeX
• Margin notes
• Font sizes, families, and styles
• Font typefaces
• Supporting modern fonts with X Ǝ L a T e X

Presentations

• Environments

Field specific

• Theorems and proofs
• Chemistry formulae
• Feynman diagrams
• Molecular orbital diagrams
• Chess notation
• Knitting patterns
• CircuiTikz package
• Pgfplots package
• Typesetting exams in LaTeX
• Attribute Value Matrices

Class files

• Understanding packages and class files
• List of packages and class files
• Writing your own package
• Writing your own class

Advanced TeX/LaTeX

• In-depth technical articles on TeX/LaTeX

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The Author of ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Can’t Go Home, Except in His Books

Kevin Kwan left Singapore’s opulent, status-obsessed, upper crust when he was 11. He’s still writing about it.

Kevin Kwan photographed at the Huntington in San Marino, Calif. “I didn’t realize how privileged I was until I got to the U.S.,” Kevin Kwan said. Credit... Jessica Lehrman for The New York Times

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By Elisabeth Egan

Elisabeth Egan reported from Los Angeles

• May 20, 2024

A reader of Kevin Kwan’s books could be forgiven for expecting him to make a grand entrance at lunch in Beverly Hills — in a Lamborghini, perhaps, or wearing a slick pair of shades.

Instead, on an unseasonably brisk Tuesday in April, Kwan walked into the private dining room at Crustacean with a tentative tilt to his head, as if clearing a low roof. He wore tortoiseshell glasses, a blue cardigan and hair cut for maximum pensive tucking behind ears. Picture David Foster Wallace minus the bandanna.

Kwan immediately moved a vase of white roses from one table to another — “Do you mind? So we can see each other?” — then hugged Crustacean’s chef, “the great Helene An,” whose garlic noodles make a cameo in his new book, “Lies and Weddings,” coming out on May 21.

To understand Kwan’s reputation for fabulousness, consider his oeuvre. His debut novel, “ Crazy Rich Asians ,” published in 2013, has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide and been translated into over 40 languages. A Broadway musical is in development. The movie version was the first major Hollywood film since “ The Joy Luck Club ” to feature a majority Asian cast .

Kwan’s next three novels covered similar territory: wealthy people behaving decadently and questionably, but usually with heart and always with panache. They were best sellers too. At one point, the “Crazy Rich Asians” trilogy occupied the top three spots on the paperback list, landing Kwan in an elite clique of authors including Colleen Hoover .

Kwan didn’t utter a word about these laurels at lunch, nor did he appear to have much in common with his over-the-top, entertainingly superficial characters. His relocation of the flowers showed a willingness to look a person in the eye. His hug was real, not an air kiss; Crustacean has been Kwan’s home away from home since he moved to Los Angeles from New York in 2019. As for his car, Kwan preferred not to go public with the make and model, but it’s not one a valet would be tempted to take for a joyride.

“I get tangential access to the world in my books, but I’m not part of that world,” Kwan said. “I feel like I’m always an outsider.”

Kwan has a habit of summarizing his characters’ educations — and, to an extent, their pedigree — in parentheses after their names. In “Lies and Weddings,” for instance, the heart throb is Rufus Leung Gresham “(Mount House/Radley/Exeter/Central St. Martins),” whose best friend Eden Tong “(Greshamsbury Nursery School/Mount House/Downe House/Cambridge)” secretly pines for him, much to the chagrin of his mother, Lady Arabella (Willcocks/Cheltenham/UWC Atlantic/Bard). You get the idea.

Kwan’s personal parenthetical is equally revealing. “Far Eastern Kindergarten/Anglo-Chinese Junior School,” he said, pausing for a swig of orange turmeric spritzer. “Clear Lake Intermediate School/Clear Lake High School/San Jacinto Junior College/University of Houston.”

The first two schools Kwan attended were in Singapore where, he said, “I grew up in a big house, with grounds, staff, all that.”

On weekends he boycotted Sunday school, preferring to sit with his parents in church (“ground zero for Singapore society”) while studying social machinations: “Who was seated where. Who dissed who.” Then he’d go to lunch with his aunt, Mary Kwan, an Auntie Mame-like figure who wrote for Singapore Tatler and “spared no fools.” Their dining companions were a roving salon of artists, architects, business people and royalty.

“I could hold my own,” Kwan said. “I didn’t behave like a kid. I would participate and listen to the gossip and feed off it from a really early age.”

If those meals were entry-level classes in the art of observation, Kwan graduated to the doctoral program when he moved, with three weeks’ notice, to Clear Lake, Texas. His father had spent his formative years in Australia and, Kwan said, “missed it when he went home to Singapore. He was a dutiful son; he gave his parents three grandsons. But he always wanted to have a different life.”

Clear Lake was NASA country and, circa 1985, home of “the last gasp of idyllic America,” Kwan said. “You went out and played with your friends till dinnertime. I think that’s really what my dad wanted us to have. He also wanted to toughen us up — toughen me up. He’d be like, Kevin, go mow the lawn. Kevin, take out the garbage. I became a really good lawn mower.”

Kwan’s new home, a suburban ranch, was a far cry from the protected luxury he’d left behind. His family lived within spitting distance of neighbors. His mother taught piano; his father was one of the original franchisees of Marble Slab Creamery.

In Texas, Kwan skipped two grades and was the youngest, smallest student in his class, earning the nickname “Doogie” (as in Howser). “I was a strange kid. I was smart and verbal. I could talk about high society,” Kwan said. “I was just trying to finish reading my biography of Margaret Thatcher.”

Among the children of engineers and astronauts, there was room for a creative type who liked to write and draw. But Kwan didn’t pursue either one with any intensity until he landed in Victoria Duckworth’s freshman composition class at San Jacinto Junior College.

“She encouraged my writing and my love of reading,” Kwan said. “She gave me Joan Didion’s ‘ A Book of Common Prayer ’ and that just blew up my world.”

The two lost touch years ago, but Duckworth was aware of Kwan’s success and sounded delighted to hear his name when she was reached by phone at her home in Buffalo. Even as a teenager, Duckworth said, “Kevin’s writing seemed effortless. He just had this wit.”

She recalled “preparing for the worst” when Kwan shared his poetry with her, but he turned out to be a gifted stylist with an “inner intellectual life.” Duckworth, who taught for more than three decades, said, “Out of the handful of students I remember, Kevin is one.”

At the University of Houston, Kwan started to take himself seriously as a writer and filmmaker. He also earned a new nickname: “the Designer Poet,” because he used words like “Armaniesque” in verse.

“I’ve always enjoyed the comedy of pretension,” he said. “I was hyper-aware of it as a child because I was in this world where there were all these high status people coming and going.”

Kwan said he has never been back to Singapore. In 2018, the country’s Ministry of Defense announced that he owed two years of national service and could face a fine or prison term if he returned. He used to dream about his home country when he was younger; now, Kwan said, “people show up from my childhood who become fully formed characters.”

Writing fiction, he said, is a way of “remembering and revisiting” that part of his life.

“Crazy Rich Asians” started as a lark, something Kwan planned to self publish for the amusement of friends. Midway through, he was working on a book about the Oprah Winfrey Show with Deborah Davis, the author of “ Strapless ,” and mentioned that he had a novel of his own in the works. Davis offered to read it.

“People were always asking me to read manuscripts and they were always dreadful,” Davis said. But she was fond of Kwan — “He was proper and courtly and had impeccable manners” — so, “I said, ‘Of course I’ll read it,’ half thinking that I probably wouldn’t.”

Davis was cooking Thanksgiving dinner for 25 people when the draft of “Crazy Rich Asians” arrived. “I looked at it and I thought, OK, I’ll read five pages,” she said. “I read five pages. I peeled five carrots. I read five pages more. Ten pages more. It was the worst dinner I ever made, but it was the best book. I could not stop reading.”

She encouraged Kwan to send “Crazy Rich Asians” to Michael Korda, a veteran biographer, novelist and longtime friend.

Kwan was reluctant. He said, “That would be like going to Michelangelo with a lump of coal and being like, ‘Look, I carved a little something, what do you think?’” — but Davis “would not let up.” Eventually he obliged.

Four days later, Korda called. He put Kwan in touch with Alexandra Machinist, then an agent at Janklow and Nesbit, who sold the book to Jenny Jackson at Doubleday.

“Crazy Rich Asians” was an instant hit in Asia, Kwan said. It was excerpted in the June 2013 issue of Vogue. Once it came out in paperback, it landed on the best seller list. And then, “Crazy Rich Asians” was the guest that never left, perched by the caviar for 41 weeks. Kwan’s ascent had begun.

Now, a dozen years and four books later, he admitted, “I wish I could have written under a pseudonym.” He was joking, sort of.

“I’m an introvert,” Kwan explained. “I grew up in a family where there were so many people who were public figures, and I saw the pressures they had to endure. I had no interest in that.”

Also, Kwan continued, “it takes a lot to write in this voice, to write in these characters’ voices. Actors always say, it’s a lot harder to make comedy. I feel the same way about writing fiction that’s funny. I can write you the saddest damn story you want; I could do that in my sleep.”

While working on “Lies and Weddings,” Kwan experienced writer’s block for the first time. The pandemic was at a low boil; the world was rife with uncertainty. “Those years changed me,” he said. “They changed everyone; how could they not? I was dealing with the new reality of, what do I even want to write anymore? There was a lot of soul searching.”

Unlike the “Crazy Rich Asians” trilogy, his new book doesn’t take place in Singapore. The story bounces from England to Hawaii to Morocco, with enough designer labels, priceless artwork and luxurious accommodations to make Beverly Hills seem folksy. But there’s an undertow beneath the froth.

“Kevin’s writing about mixed race heritage. He’s writing more about gender than he has before,” Jackson, his editor, said. “There’s this whole second layer that’s social commentary and astute cultural observation.”

The shift is intentional, Kwan said: “I’ve branched out. I’m inspired by this new generation of Asians who are so much more comfortable in their own skin.”

He went on, “I love looking at the theatricality of it all” — the art, the fashion, the food — “just like I did as a kid. I love sitting back and watching drama unfold. What happens when families get together? What happens when friends get together? What happens when someone new marries in?”

Now 50, the age his father was when the family moved to Texas, Kwan remains committed to his upper-crust characters. He still maintains folders of outfits, locations and foods for each one. He said, “I’m trying to show that authentic side to people who have rich people problems. Heartache is still heartache. Grief is still grief. That’s a through line you’ll see in all my books: what money does to families. How it can infantilize people. How it can be a prison.”

The garlic noodles arrived from the secret kitchen where An protects her family recipe from prying eyes.

“Hopefully I’m creating a faceted portrait of people and their issues,” Kwan said. “For better or worse, this is just what I know.”

Elisabeth Egan is a writer and editor at the Times Book Review. She has worked in the world of publishing for 30 years. More about Elisabeth Egan

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