Kevin Kwan's 6 favorite social satires

All three novels in Kevin Kwan's best-selling Crazy Rich Asians trilogy are now available in paperback, and a movie adaptation of the first book is due in August. Below, Kwan names his six favorite social satires.

Snobs by Julian Fellowes (St. Martin's, $17).

This elegant skewering of the modern-day English aristocracy was an inspiration as I wrote Crazy Rich Asians. Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, introduces us to attractive but common Edith Lavery, who marries into a titled family but sets off a series of earthquakes when she realizes that living the life of those "to the manor born" isn't all it's cracked up to be.

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The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton (Vintage, $12).

Nothing about Undine Spragg — the most ambitious social climber New York has ever seen — seems dated at all. Change Spragg's outfits and substitute Cadillac Escalades for carriages, and Wharton's brilliantly astute Gilded Age saga feels more current than an episode of Gossip Girl — and way more addictive.

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh (Back Bay, $16).

The name Evelyn Waugh might bring to mind Brideshead Revisited seriousness. But his early works were wickedly hilarious. This romp about the Bright Young Things — a decadent subset of 1920s London high society — had me laughing so hard I almost fell out of bed.

People Like Us by Dominick Dunne (Ballantine, $17).

To me this is the ultimate New York novel and one of the reasons I moved to the city. Dunne managed to do in 1988 what Truman Capote couldn't do a decade earlier: He wittily eviscerated Manhattan's nouvelle society, thinly disguising the names of the elite, but was still invited to all the right parties afterward.

Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (Wordsworth, $9).

If you ever thought that Trollope, the greatest chronicler of the Victorian age, might be too stuffy, read this deliciously captivating page-turner. An heir to a noble but cash-strapped family is told from the day he is born that he "must marry money!" Naturally, he falls in love with a girl of no fortune and a dubious pedigree.

The Windfall by Diksha Basu (Broadway, $16).

Basu's recent novel is one of the most laugh-out-loud funny books I've read in ages. Following a newly moneyed family trying desperately to fit in after moving to one of Delhi's poshest neighborhoods, it offers a clever glimpse into the intricate aspirations and machinations of India's 1 percent.