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In ‘Portrait of a Thief,’ Chinese American Students Scheme to Steal Back Looted Art

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In the early 1800s Lord Elgin, a British ambassador, removed sculptures and other cultural artifacts from Athens’ Parthenon. The items, now known as the Elgin Marbles, were later sold by Elgin to the British crown and currently reside in London’s British Museum. The affair is a centuries-long point of contention between the nations of Greece and England, who have spent the intervening years requesting and denying their return, respectively. Were they looted or rescued—or both? Who do they really belong to? As Grace D. Li writes in her new novel about a fictional art heist, Portrait of a Thief : “What is art but another way of exerting power?”

Li—currently a third year medical student at Stanford University—works as a tour guide at the campus’ Cantor Arts Center. In addition to aiding her book research (“It’s nice to be able to walk around a museum and track things like, ‘where are the security cameras?’”), she credits her experience as a tour guide with helping her to “think about the role of museums in preserving history, and how museums take an active role in the cultivation of what we remember and what we observe.”

Portrait of a Thief is her debut novel. It centers on the repatriation of “what the West stole”—12 zodiac statues pilfered from China’s former Old Summer Palace by British and French colonizers during the Second Opium War. Li explains that though it might not be a pivotal event in American history books, the real-life theft is “part of the general body of knowledge” she had growing up as a Chinese American. Li’s parents both came to the U.S. in the 1990s. “That idea of ‘who does art belong to?’ and feeling caught between cultures really spoke to me,” she says, “so I wanted to write about that.”

China is in possession of several of the zodiac statues, but the rest remain missing. Li took this unsolved mystery as inspiration to think through questions of patrimony and ownership. “The zodiac statues are a representation of everything that had been looted from the Old Summer Palace,” she explains, and in her novel, they aren’t missing but displaced in museums around the world. This presents an opportunity for her protagonist Will Chen, who Li describes as the “quintessential, perfect Asian son.” An art history student at Harvard, suave and intelligent Will gets approached by a mysterious Chinese investor who wants him to steal the statues back from the museums. Will quickly assembles a crew of other Chinese Americans and the novel kicks off.

The team fills out heist crew archetypes but in a way that feels natural: Alex Huang is a MIT-trained software programmer who can feasibly parlay her skills into hacking; Will’s sister Irene has the kind of charm and confidence that can “shape the world to her will,” making her the ideal grifter; Lily Wu, whose hobby of street racing has won her many a car, is a natural pick for getaway driver; and Daniel Liang is a steady-handed pre-med student/thief. There’s intergroup tension—some hostile, some romantic—and a lot on the line as this group of 20-somethings essentially agree to sacrifice their futures to correct the past.

Portrait of a Thief is a confident debut for Li, whose writing shows great control at the line level and of the overall narrative. Descriptions are both economic and poetic; the novel keeps a swift pace as the characters crisscross the world, from the American South to the San Francisco Bay Area, to Beijing and Europe. It’s easy to see why Netflix was so quick to nab TV rights for the book.

Though the novel itself is slick, the characters are, realistically and endearingly, not. They are college students and the author’s knowledge of that (lack of) experience ensures their turn to crime is grippingly unsmooth. It also mirrors Li’s own work on the book. “The part where Will is taking notes while watching Ocean’s Eleven was lifted from my real life experience trying to figure out how these movies structured a heist,” Li explains. Other heist research included the Fast and Furious franchise and a Jackie Chan flick called CZ12 (also about the looted zodiac heads).

In the book, Li refers to Will and Irene’s pursuit of Chinese politics and art in school as them “reaching for the country their parents left behind.” The heist is another reach. With it, they’re working through their own relationship to China as members of its diaspora. Li’s first-hand knowledge of the Chinese American experience helps add authentic texture to their fictional experiences. Alex recalls customers over-enunciating their English when speaking to her immigrant parents, and they are all wrestling with being dutiful sons and daughters to their parents (a concept not unique to, but prominent in Asian families) while living their own lives. Also, since Li wrote much of the book during the pandemic and felt a responsibility to not ignore the way it changed the country, the rise in anti-Asian violence is also referenced as another layer of their families’ experiences in America. In this way the book itself is a reach, from Li, using fiction to imagine a new and more righteous future.

Portrait of a Thief ’s publication comes at a time when many museums in the West are being confronted with questions of ethics; Egypt and India have joined Greece in demanding repatriation of stolen works from Britain. The book embodies the zeitgeist and the spirit of the Toni Cade Bambara quote Li uses to begin its third act: “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.”

‘Portrait of a Thief’ is out on April 5. Books Inc. Mountain View (317 Castro St.) hosts a launch party with Grace D. Li in person on Tuesday, April 5 at 7pm. Details here .

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Book Review: Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

By doreen sheridan.

I picked up Grace D. Li’s Portrait of a Thief expecting a fast-paced, exciting crime thriller with characters who felt close enough to me in the Asian American immigrant experience to be almost instinctively relatable. What I got instead was a slow burn look into the minds of five relatively privileged Chinese American college students—all around the age of twenty-one—as they grapple round and round with identity, belonging, and moral rectitude, especially as it pertains to cultural heritage. 

Will Chen is a Harvard student working part-time at Boston’s Sackler Museum when he witnesses the audacious theft of almost two dozen pieces of Chinese art. One of the thieves slips a business card into his pocket as they’re making a getaway, leading Will, already dissatisfied with what he’s learned about imperialism as an art history major, to contemplate his own complicity in institutional theft hiding behind the mask of cultural education. Worse, the detective in charge of the case reveals subtle nativist tendencies while questioning him:

It might have been a small thing, to be called Chinese instead of Chinese American, to have this detective who spoke in a Boston accent look at him as if this place, this museum, this art didn’t belong to him, but—it didn’t feel like a small thing. Not when he was at Harvard, this place of dreams, and he was so close to everything he had ever wanted.   It was his senior year, and the whole world felt on the verge of cracking open.   “I’ve told you everything I know,” he said, “and I know my rights. Next time you want to accuse me of something, go through my lawyer.”

After this interaction, he almost impulsively calls the number on the business card. No one answers, but shortly afterward he receives a text containing a link to an Air China reservation under his name for five first-class tickets to Beijing. Knowing that this is an invitation for him to put together a crew, he recruits first his beautiful younger sister Irene, who always gets her way by dint of charm and poise. Next, he contacts a former romantic interest turned friend, software engineer Alex Huang, who’s happy to help him with favors in cyberspace.

Irene points him in the direction of her college roommate Lily Wu, whose penchant for illegal street racing speaks to her craving for thrills. Finally, the siblings recruit their childhood friend Daniel Liang, the son of the FBI’s foremost expert on Chinese art theft. Together, they fly to Beijing, where a monied young socialite offers them fifty million dollars for securing the return of the five fountainheads.

Each member of the crew has their own reasons for agreeing. Daniel nurtures an adolescent resentment towards his dad, born from their shared grief at losing Daniel’s mother. Lily is consumed by a burning, if unformed, desire for escape, while Alex craves a different life from the one expected of her, though like Lily she isn’t quite sure what kind. Will has romantic ideas of China and his own place in history. And complicated, perpetually right Irene has, perhaps, the most burdensome role of all, to keep her impractical older brother out of trouble:

Even though she knew how much he loved art, a part of her had always been waiting for him to realize that his responsibilities were worth more than his dreams. He was the eldest, after all. But if he would not do it—if he would not think of the expectations placed on him from their parents, their grandparents, all those in China who saw them as the American Dream—Irene would. She would do what he wouldn’t, and while she was at it, she would make sure she did it better.    Irene Chen had never failed.   She could not afford to.

As these five young people cross continents and plan their heists, they unexpectedly build deeper relationships and run up against greater obstacles than they’d ever anticipated. Will they manage to carry out the steals of the century? Or will their names go down in history as cautionary tales against theft, no matter how noble the reasoning?

Ms. Li aims for elegance in her depiction of the psychology of crime and the morality of contemporary art curation. It’s clear that the interior struggles of these five representatives of the Chinese diaspora, whether first- or third-generation American, are more important than the actual thefts themselves, which are carried out about as well as you’d expect by a bunch of young amateurs whose idea of studying crime involves repeatedly watching movies like Ocean’s Eleven and The Fast and the Furious . The plot twist at the end has interesting things to say about colonialism and theft, even if the book overall doesn’t hang together as well as the author likely envisioned it. Perhaps the Netflix series currently in the works will sharpen the material. I’m definitely here for continuing nuanced representation of the multitudes that form the Asian American experience.

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How a Stanford med student used her experiences to write a heist caper and score a Netflix deal

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Portrait of a Thief

By Grace D. Li Tiny Reparations: 384 pages, $26 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org , whose fees support independent bookstores.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit as Grace D. Li was finishing her first year of medical school. She found herself stuck at home, attending classes on Zoom and barred from setting foot in a hospital.

“It was the most devastating medical catastrophe of the last century, and there was nothing I could do to help,” she recalls.

Frustrated, the 26-year-old Stanford medical student turned to a passion project waiting on her computer: a novel she had started a few years earlier. The result is “ Portrait of a Thief ,” a heist caper out this week that turns on breakneck action, fast cars and a thoughtful exploration of Western colonialism and the complexities of Chinese diaspora identities.

The story of why Li turned to fiction in a crisis — and pursued two seemingly opposing career paths — has as many twists and turns as Li’s novel, born from her experiences as a scientist and writer, American-born and ethnically Chinese.

For Li, who starts her third year in medical school this summer, her career choices aren’t contradictory. “Despite the differences between medicine and writing,” she says during a recent conversation , “both require thinking deeply and thoughtfully about the world and the people in it.”

The premise of “Portrait of a Thief” is deceptively simple. The novel’s main character, Will Chen, is a Harvard art history student who witnesses the theft of Chinese artifacts from a campus museum by an organized team that leaves him an intriguing calling card. That experience and a racist encounter with cops investigating the crime propel Chen to reach out to the chief executive of a shadowy Chinese government-backed conglomerate. The CEO offers $50 million to Chen and his hand-selected group of students to steal five bronze Zodiac heads that once adorned a fountain in Beijing’s Old Summer Palace.

As improbable as that setup may sound, Li says inspiration for her heist novel came from a true story.

After graduating from Duke University with a major in biology and a minor in creative writing, Li had taken a two-year assignment with Teach for America in New York. She taught biology in the Bronx and ran a high school’s first creative writing program. When she was in the middle of applying for medical school , she read a newspaper story about the heist of Chinese jade and gold artifacts from a museum in southwestern England.

Li, whose parents emigrated from China in the 1990s, says the story “struck me deeply.” Digging deeper, she learned that such robberies, from museums in Sweden, Norway, England and France, had started almost a decade before. Thieves targeted priceless Chinese antiquities that had been pilfered in 1860 by French and English invaders who ransacked and looted the Old Summer Palace, a constellation of 200 ornate palaces, pavilions, courtyards and gardens, before burning the complex to the ground. The three-day conflagration sparked China’s 21st century challenges of the provenance of artifacts displayed in Western museums, a bid by wealthy Chinese and government-backed corporations to snap up pilfered items at auction, and speculation that treasures lifted from European museums over the last decade had been “stolen to order” by those intent on repatriating the art to China.

Li says the swirl of stories “made me wonder if I could have been one of those thieves.” The tantalizing possibilities tapped into her love of popular culture, including heist movies and the “Fast and Furious” film franchise, and ignited her novel.

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Although “Portrait” reflects Li’s interests, like a good scientist, she filled in the gaps with research. She studied Chinese art history, how to make bronze sculptures and the collections, locations and layouts of European museums that housed some of the disputed artifacts. At Stanford, she soaked up contemporary art and museum operations while serving as a pre-pandemic tour guide for art museums on campus. She also found mentors and community at the university’s Medicine & the Muse Program , which supports diversity and integration of the arts and humanities into medical education.

Li’s hard work paid off: Editor Amber Oliver acquired “Portrait” in 2021 for Phoebe Robinson’s Tiny Reparations Books imprint. As one of Stanford’s MedScholars, Li received time off and funding to finish her novel, which she did during those frustrating early days of the pandemic.

Li will join a small but distinguished club of doctors who write crime fiction. Arthur Conan Doyle, Michael Crichton and Tess Gerritsen all balanced medical careers — using their left brains — with right-brain creative fiction that makes readers’ blood run cold. Li recognizes the debt she owes to such pioneers who “helped me realize a career like this was possible.”

Buoyed by that knowledge and encouragement from her editor, Li leaned into her characters who are amateurs but also heist novel archetypes. There’s Chen, the mastermind; his sister Irene, a public policy major who can con her way out of anything; Irene’s roommate Lily Wu, the getaway car driver and a Duke student who likes street racing; Alex Huang, the team’s nascent hacker and an MIT dropout; and Will’s best friend Daniel, a premed student who has an inside track as the son of an FBI agent assigned to art crimes.

Although Li uses genre archetypes and tropes, she didn’t rely on them to tell a bigger, more personal story about the wide range of identities within the Chinese diaspora.

“Everyone thinks that Chinese identity is a monolith,” she says, “but there’s enormous diversity among Chinese Americans in terms of language, personal identity, socioeconomic status and how they think of themselves in relationship to China. There’s no one idea of what it means to be Chinese.”

The Great Chinese Art Heist crew, as the students dub themselves, mirrors that reality. Four are Americans, from California, New York and Li’s native Texas; Beijing-born Daniel is a naturalized U.S. citizen. Li’s students are idealistic enough to compartmentalize their crimes as a reckoning with Western cultures and colonialism. But they also recognize that the thefts will bring enormous wealth and the ability to break free from crushing student loans and, more important, the structured lives mapped out by their families — “the future carved open,” Li writes, like the precious artifacts they steal.

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“Portrait” attracted enough early buzz that Netflix picked up the book for a television adaption, with Li serving as an executive producer. It’s an exciting but liminal space for a medical school student with a commitment to health equity for underserved patients and a book tour that includes an April 24 appearance at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books . She says of her debut, “I hope ‘Portrait’ invites conversation about the ways that history continues to influence the present day, as well as illuminates the complexities and joys of the Chinese American experience — all wrapped up in a story that’s as exciting as a heist.”

Li also shared that she’s starting a new novel. Continuing to blend art and science, she plans to set it at — where else? — Stanford’s medical school.

Woods is a book critic, editor and author of several anthologies and novels, most notably the Detective Charlotte Justice mystery series.

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Review: Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

• Title: Portrait of a Thief
• Author: Grace D. Li
• Genre: contemporary fiction
• Intended audience: young adult
• Format read: eARC
• Publisher: Tiny Reparations Books
• Pub date: April 5, 2022
• Content warnings: past parental death
• Rating: 4/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now.

Will Chen plans to steal them back.

A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents’ American Dream. But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible—and illegal—job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago.

His crew is every heist archetype one can imag­ine—or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down.

Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars—and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they’ve dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted at­tempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.

Equal parts beautiful, thoughtful, and thrilling, Portrait of a Thief is a cultural heist and an examination of Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary cri­tique of the lingering effects of colonialism.

As I believe many readers were and will be, I was initially drawn to Portrait of a Thief because of its status as a heist story. Ever since I first read Heist Society at age 12, I have loved a good heist. But as I was soon to discover, Portrait of a Thief is more than just a witty heist novel. I believe the most accurate description is that it is a quiet, intelligent novel about identity, culture, and, honestly, ethical dilemmas of art.

Portrait of a Thief covers the life of six different college students as they work together to steal back some of the most priceless pieces of Chinese art in the world. Mastermind, hacker, grifter, they are your traditional heist team. Until…they’re not. They don’t really know what they’re doing. And like most college students, they are actually quite self-conscious. They are flooded with fears and self-doubt. They bicker with each other a lot. I think one of the reasons I liked Portrait of a Thief so much is that it is really about young people attempting to find their place in the world. They just happen to be doing so while planning to rob six of the world’s highest security museums.

In each of her characters, Li captured what it feels like to be standing at the precipice to your future, unsure of what your next move should be. Honestly, it is scary and overwhelming, and Li portrays it well. I loved getting to read about each of the characters’ individual journeys. They each had their own distinct perspectives and approaches to the challenges in front of them, which made the book infinitely more interesting to read.

Something I really enjoyed was the way the novel incorporated discussions of diaspora into the characters and the text. Each character approached it from a different perspective, leading to nuanced and interesting discussions. I have never seen a young adult handle diaspora in the way that Portrait of a Thief did, but I think it was high time.

Li creates a satisfying plot and a compelling cast of characters. Her writing successfully captures the many emotions of being a college student, and also manages to create interesting conversations around who art really belongs to. I highly recommend Portrait of a Thief , and I cannot wait to see what Li writes next.

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They Were College Friends. Now They’re Art Thieves.

Grace D. Li’s debut, “Portrait of a Thief,” is both a heist novel and a reckoning.

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By Sarah Weinman

• April 8, 2022

The heist narrative, as depicted in films and TV shows, is often a romp. But the heist novels I adore (think Richard Stark’s canonical Parker novels) are pitiless, even merciless, about the costs incurred to those who steal as well as those who are stolen from.

Grace D. Li’s debut, PORTRAIT OF A THIEF (Tiny Reparations Books, 376 pp., $26), ventures even further from standard heist fare. A Chinese American art history major at Harvard, Will Chen, burns with fury over the way museums have long looted Chinese artifacts. “What is ours is not ours,” he writes in a class paper. He’s primed for action when a Chinese billionaire offers him $50 million to “take back what the West stole” — five priceless bronze fountainheads, located in museums in New York and Europe. Soon Will is recruiting a small group of friends, siblings and lovers for his crew.

The thefts are engaging and surprising, and the narrative brims with international intrigue. Li, however, has delivered more than a straight thriller here, especially in the parts that depict the despair Will and his pals feel at being displaced, overlooked, underestimated and discriminated against. This is as much a novel as a reckoning.

John Sandford created a winning formula with his furiously paced Prey novels, which star Lucas Davenport, a Minnesota detective turned U.S. marshal with a penchant for sharp dressing, high romancing and expert marksmanship.

In THE INVESTIGATOR (Putnam, 392 pp., $29), he moves the chess pieces to a different board. This isn’t a Lucas Davenport novel but a Letty Davenport one, and while she’s cut from a similar cloth as her dad (“She was smart, hard-nosed and hard-bodied, lean, muscled like a dancer, and occasionally displayed a sharp, dry wit”), she’s made different choices in her 24 years, landing in a Senate desk job that bores her beyond measure.

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• Nov 30, 2022

Put That Thing Back Where It Came From: A Review of Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

Hello, Book Nerds! Welcome back to Reading Has Ruined My Life or welcome if you are new. As always, my name is Hannah and I am your captain on this journey into my bookcases. Special hello to Honduras. It’s nice to see y’all.

As promised, I bring you an actual review today. I finally finished the book I was reading and I’m ready to review it! So please welcome to the stage Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li!

I need more heist books in my life. If you have any recommendations for me please drop them in the comments down below; I love a good heist novel. You can also send them my way on RHRML's new Instagram page! Make sure to follow the blog @ReadingHasRuinedMyLife on Instagram. Back to Portrait of a Thief though.

I have a lot of mixed emotions regarding this one. There are a lot of parts I really enjoyed, yet there were times it kept losing me. We’ll get to all that in a few minutes, but first we need the synopsis.

As always, a spoiler alert is in order. If you’ve been here before then you know I love to spoil the entirety of the book in question. Today is no different so you’ve been warned.

Meet Will Chen, an Art History major at Harvard and future international art thief. During his senior year of college, he gets the job opportunity of a life time: steal back some stolen Chinese art and receive 50-million dollars. Hello, where do I sign up! (FBI, that is a joke. I say that in complete jest. I have no want or desire to rob a museum. Please take me off your watch list. I am not threat to museums. Absolutely love museums.)

Anyway, Will is going to need some help if he wants to rob five of the biggest museums in the world. Yes, that’s right, Will has to rob five museums or else he won’t get his 50-million dollars. He needs to steal back the five missing Zodiac Heads from China’s Old Summer Palace. These items were looted centuries ago and it’s finally time for them to return home. Will still needs that crew though so he enlists his sister Irene, his best friend Daniel, his sister’s roommate Lily, and a girl named Alex who he met on Tinder when he was freshman.

It seems like an old crew but let me explain. Will is the leader. Irene is the con artist. Daniel is the main thief. Lily is the getaway driver. And Alex is the tech genius. Together they make up our squad. But will they succeed? Will they get caught or will they make it out of this as multi-millionaires?

Now as I said, I kept going back and forth on this one. For a while there was something about Portrait of a Thief that I didn’t like but I couldn’t put my finger on. I couldn’t figure out if it was the pacing or the characters or what. But then I got it. The descriptions of this book were hit or miss. There was a lot of great imagery in the book. The descriptions of the art work were beautiful. But few other things had that level of detail.

I couldn’t tell you much about the heist planning. Nor much about what the characters look like. Museums and Alex’s family’s restaurant yes, but most other things no. A heist book relies heavily on descriptions. Readers need to know all the details the main characters are picking up on. They need to know where security cameras are, the escape routes, every single part of the plan; these are all necessary details in heist books. Yet Portrait of a Thief lacks these details. It detracts from the story. I felt I was missing too much important information.

Speaking about heists and planning aspects, I couldn’t figure out why this inexperienced group of 20-somethings, who for the most part weren’t even out of college yet, were chosen to pull this off. This heist is a massive undertaking, and the person who hires them has billions and could have easily hired professionals to steal back the art but chooses not to. It makes no sense. Between the lack of descriptions, odd motivations from the financier, and honestly the lack of heist in general, most of the book felt lacking. Portrait of a Thief is pitched as Ocean’s Eleven meets The Farewell but it’s pretty far from that. This isn’t a heist novel with perfect plans to outsmart cops and federal agents every step of the way. It’s a lot more of young adults bickering and somehow managing to steal priceless art from some of the world’s top museums in a smash-and-grab. Yeah, the heists are not the highlight of this heist novel.

The pacing also could have been improved upon. It too was hit or miss. I felt it was the worst in the end. There were some time skips that occurred which were hard to take in as it was difficult to figure out just how much time had passed; they did not fit in with the rest of the novel. That wasn’t the only issue with the pacing though. Things happened too fast too quickly and then nothing happened for quite some time. This happened every chapter.

Despite these issues, this book was still pretty good. I was amused the entire time and enjoyed the complexity of the characters. All five of the main characters struggle in different ways; readers can easily find a character to latch onto and identify with.

I should note that a large part of this book is about the pressure felt by children in immigrant families to be successful and the identity issues they feel when strung between two incredibly different cultures; specifically those of Chinese descent. I do not feel qualified to talk much about this aspect and deem it well written or not. I personally think it’s well done, but I am not someone who should be passing judgment on this aspect. Reviews written by readers of Chinese descent tend to view this part of the novel as incredibly well written and deeply appreciate the representation Portrait of a Thief brings. Again, I do not feel qualified to properly discuss this topic and highly recommend reading reviews by readers who are of Chinese descent.

I can talk about colonialism though. Colonialism is a big theme within Portrait of a Thief . The idea of an art heist in order to talk about the ownership and power of art is so simple yet genius. History has always been told by conquerors, and what do they do? Keep the spoils of war AKA art. As of late there have been many articles about museums keeping looted works of art, and this novel adds many great points to the conversation. It opens up discussions on the matter that many people probably wouldn’t have without. For that I praise this novel.

Overall this was a decent debut. I felt that there were issues with the technical aspects of the novel, but the themes and discussions were poignant. Portrait of a Thief is already in development at Netflix to be turned into a TV series. I feel television is a great vehicle for this novel. I believe the world Grace D. Li has crafted will be able to flourish as a show. There will be more time for character relations to be fleshed out, the pacing fixed, details expanded upon; I have high hopes for the future adaption. And yes, when it finally premieres years from now, I will review it.

And with that, I must bid you all adieu. I shall see you next with another great post. I don’t know what it will be, it’ll be a surprise for us all, but I’ll see you then!

Until next time, stay safe, wash your hands, and read some good books for me.

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BOOK REVIEW: PORTRAIT OF A THIEF (2022) BY GRACE D. LI – A HEIST OF THE HEART

BOOK REVIEW EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ELLA KELLEHER WRITES – A Harvard senior obsessed with the beautiful, Will Chen is the perfect Chinese son: hardworking, handsome, and respectful. Except when he is offered an illegal job by a mysterious wealthy Chinese benefactor to steal back art pieces from heavily guarded Western museums that were looted from Beijing hundreds of years ago –  that  he finds himself unable to refuse. What’s more important, chasing your own “American Dream” or defending the eternal legacy of your people?

Will’s crew is as archetypally “Ocean’s Eleven” as it gets – and it’s exhilarating. Imagine a dazzling criminal lineup. First, we have the con artist: Irene Chen, Will’s faultless Duke University public policy major sister who can “talk her way out of any situation.” Then there’s Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands whose father works for the FBI. Then, of course, there’s also the getaway driver, Lily Wu – an angel-faced engineering major who drag-races at midnight. Finally, there’s Alex Huang: an MIT dropout, Silicon Valley software engineer who can hack her way into any computer system. Each crew member has a somewhat tortured relationship with each other and China, especially as members of the Chinese diaspora in America. But when Will asks them to join his heist, not a single member can turn him down.

Chinese American author,  Grace D. Li , debuts spectacularly with  Portrait of a Thief  (2022). Currently a medical student at Duke University (not unlike the characters in her novel), one of Li’s aims has been to explain the triumphs and troubles of the Chinese diaspora through literature. The eternally binding strings of identity twist and tangle with the current of migration. Often, children of immigrants find themselves lost, straddling two very distant lands, deeply mired in the confusing question of,  Which country deserves my loyalty?

The book starts off with a bang – or, should I say, a shattering of glass. Will Chen, an art history major, is at the Sackler Museum in Harvard while it is being robbed of its Chinese art. Amid the chaos, a business card is casually folded into his pocket by one of the cloaked thieves. Later, he finds out he has been chosen to assemble a specialized group of Chinese Americans to steal (or shall we say,  return ) five Chinese zodiac fountainheads that had been illegally robbed from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing long ago. All fountainheads had been dispersed among various overseas museums, divided by thousands of miles. The mission is simple but harrowing: Successfully complete five heists at five different museums, bring the fountainheads back to their rightful owners and receive fifty million dollars. The catch is that this ragtag crew is comprised of hotheaded college students chased relentlessly by the FBI. Were they doomed from the start?

The focus of this story is not the robberies themselves, although they are adrenaline-charging. Instead, this is a purely character-driven feast. All are tied together not only by mutual connections with Will Chen himself but also by their shared Chinese American experience – a unique conundrum of belonging to neither China nor America. As children who are too Chinese for America and too American for China, they feel pressure to meet familial expectations. Under the weight of their parents’ dreams for them, how can these new-world young adults find their way? Lost in the murky hollows of a generational identity crisis, they decide to carve out a path for themselves by hand using lock picks and ski masks.

As the group plans the first big heist at the Swedish Drottningholm Palace in stylish first-class flight cabins, each distinct and colorful personality butts heads and hearts. Alex and Irene dislike each other from the start – leading to a climax of steamy hatred that will undoubtedly take the reader by surprise. Daniel has eyes for Irene, while Will sketches the outlines of Lily’s sleeping face without her knowledge. Each character, in one way or another, has tried (admittedly futilely) to “make China love [them] back.” But, where their efforts failed, they at least have one another to rely on for love and support.

Li’s book chronicles a troubling concept: one of modern accepted Western imperialism. The idea that “what is ours is not ours.” The admired museums and beloved palaces that smatter the Western world with foreign jewels and treasures tell a different tale from what most of us grew up believing. These esteemed landmarks do not carry harmless collections of forgotten ornaments from distant, dissolved empires. Simply put, they house hordes of stolen, culturally invaluable art. We must ask ourselves: “Who could determine what counted as theft when museums and countries and civilizations saw the spoils of conquest as rightfully earned?” Looted art serves as a reminder of a lasting legacy, one steeped in the blood of countless nations. Is it so surprising that four headstrong college students recklessly tried to right these wrongs?

LMU English major graduate Ella Kelleher is the AMI book review editor-in-chief and a contributing staff writer for Asia Media International. She majored in English with a concentration in multi-ethnic literature.

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PORTRAIT OF A THIEF

by Grace D. Li ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 2022

A compelling portrait of the Chinese diaspora experience that doesn’t quite land as either literary fiction or thriller.

A debut novel calls out institutionalized imperialism in the Western world.

While working at Harvard’s Sackler Museum, Will Chen, a senior majoring in art history, witnesses a robbery of Chinese art. He quickly finds himself caught up in the investigation. The problem: He’s actually running the heist. Will and four other Chinese American college students—Will’s sister and several acquaintances—have been contracted by China’s youngest billionaire, the CEO of a shadowy company called China Poly, to steal five bronze fountainheads from museums around the world and return them to China. These real-life fountainheads were looted from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace by the French and British in 1860 during the Second Opium War. The novel’s title, therefore, refers to not only the idealistic heisters, but also the art museums that knowingly purchased China’s stolen artifacts. If Will and his crew can recover all five pieces, they’ll split a $50 million payout. For each, the payout represents a release from the pressures they associate with Chinese diaspora identity: achieving financial success and making a name for themselves. The characters’ meditations on the loss and hybridity of their identity—never feeling fully at home in China or America—are spot-on. The problem is that these sections gum up the pace of the thriller. Moreover, Li’s characters are so educated, career driven, and emotionally aware that it’s hard to believe they would agree to jeopardize their futures by doing the heist in the first place. While restoring the fountainheads to China is ethically sound, why do they buy into this brawn-before-brain method of retribution? The characters themselves admit that most successful art repatriations have come about by orchestrated public outcry. Their nuanced views of their own lives do not extend to China’s politics or even the fact that they aren’t really working for China but rather for a corporation—China Poly. It’s as if the two are one and the same.

Pub Date: April 5, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-593-18473-8

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Tiny Reparations

Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022

LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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THE LIFE IMPOSSIBLE

by Matt Haig ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2024

Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy.

A British widow travels to Ibiza and learns that it’s never too late to have a happy life.

In a world that seems to be getting more unstable by the moment, Haig’s novels are a steady ship in rough seas, offering a much-needed positive message. In works like the bestselling The Midnight Library (2020), he reminds us that finding out what you truly love and where you belong in the universe are the foundations of building a better existence. His latest book continues this upbeat messaging, albeit in a somewhat repetitive and facile way. Retired British schoolteacher Grace Winters discovers that an old acquaintance has died and left her a ramshackle home in Ibiza. A widow who lost her only child years earlier, Grace is at first reluctant to visit the house, because, at 72, she more or less believes her chance for happiness is over—but when she rouses herself to travel to the island, she discovers the opposite is true. A mystery surrounds her friend’s death involving a roguish islander, his activist daughter, an internationally famous DJ, and a strange glow in the sea that acts as a powerful life force and upends Grace’s ideas of how the cosmos works. Framed as a response to a former student’s email, the narrative follows Grace’s journey from skeptic (she was a math teacher, after all) to believer in the possibility of magic as she learns to move on from the past. Her transformation is the book’s main conflict, aside from a protest against an evil developer intent on destroying Ibiza’s natural beauty. The outcome is never in doubt, and though the story often feels stretched to the limit—this novel could have easily been a novella—the author’s insistence on the power of connection to change lives comes through loud and clear.

Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024

ISBN: 9780593489277

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024

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New York Times Bestseller

BY ANY OTHER NAME

by Jodi Picoult ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 20, 2024

A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.

Who was Shakespeare?

Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name , “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.

Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024

ISBN: 9780593497210

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024

LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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by Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan

by Jodi Picoult

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'Portrait of a Thief': Brainy heist novel seeks to steal back looted Chinese art

What’s the use of being a master thief if you’re miserable all the time?

It's a question I couldn’t help but ponder throughout Grace D. Li’s debut “Portrait of a Thief” (Tiny Reparations Books, 384 pp., ★★½ out of four, out now), a heist novel that seems to be fighting its literary aspirations on every page, which is frustrating since its central conceit is original and compelling.  

When Harvard art history student Will Chen witnesses a brazen robbery of priceless Chinese art from the Sackler Museum in Boston, two things happen: He pockets a tiny jade artifact for himself and finds himself recruited by a shadowy Chinese billionaire with an offer: Steal five Chinese zodiac fountainhead pieces from museums around the world – or, well, steal them back, since the pieces were looted from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace – and upon their safe return home, receive $50 million.

'Let's Not Do That Again': Grant Ginder spills on his new scandalous political thriller

It’s a killer set-up that allows Li to examine issues of Chinese American identity, colonialism and the very nature of who can ever truly own art. And in that way, the novel works exceptionally well. Li parses her characters’ internal conflicts expertly. But when it comes to their external conflicts – and the heists themselves – the novel collapses almost immediately.  

You see, Will needs a squad, so he puts together a team of hyper-educated, well-to-do Chinese Americans: his beautiful sister Irene, a charming sociopath/public policy major at Duke; her pal Lily, an engineering major at Duke who also happens to be a drift racer; old friend Daniel, who is pre-med at UCLA and whose father just so happens to be an FBI agent in the art crimes division (no, really); and Alex, an MIT drop-out who now has a lucrative Silicon Valley job.  

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They all say yes to Will, for no good reason. If just one had even muttered “Yolo!” it would be more believable. Likewise, that a billionaire’s best bet to pull off this gig are five morose 20-somethings makes one wonder what the benefit of being a mysterious oligarch is these days. Were all the soldiers of fortune busy? 

The whole squad is primed for a good life and yet each is miserable in such a relentlessly benign way that their acquiescence turns the crime itself into a joyless affair, The Thomas Crown Affair as mumblecore. Getting $10 million each doesn’t seem like it’s going to help, frankly, not when their worries are the kind most people associate with being a junior in college, when every decision feels permanent, all love is unrequited and even the weather seems like it portends important things.

This might be why Li takes great pains to explain the gothic quality of fog – “Fog swept in from the distant Baltic Sea, carrying a swift ocean wind, a chill that hung over the dark like anticipation” – and light – “[T]he sky was the pale gray of a knife tilted to the light” – throughout the novel. It can make for pretty if somewhat imprecise prose (wouldn’t the knife be reflecting the color of the light?), but does nothing to create tension. One less description of the color blue or one less comparison of anything else to a knife – Li can be repetitive, bloating the novel – and one tangible, believable antagonist would have done wonders for the languorous pacing of this novel. Without one, “Portrait” runs flat, free of consequences or threats, our team chased by notions more often than law enforcement. 

The pleasure that comes from reading a heist novel is seeing people we empathize with getting away with it; taking down the powerful, the elite, the ostentatious. Li has the perfect set-up – returning looted art to its proper home is a winning notion. But she’s picked such a dour team to execute her plan, and surrounded them with such unbelievable circumstances, that it’s hard to feel anything but disappointed.  

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Samantha Kilford

Corporate PR & Bookworm

Book Review: Portrait of a Thief

February 18, 2024 · In: Book Review , Books

History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now.

Will Chen plans to steal them back.

A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents’ American Dream. But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible—and illegal—job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago.

His crew is every heist archetype one can imag­ine—or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down.

Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars—and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they’ve dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted at­tempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.

“ Art belongs to the creator,” Will said, his voice soft, “not the conqueror. No matter what the law says, or what treaties are signed. For too long, museums have held on to art that isn’t theirs to keep, bought more because they know they can.”

Portrait of a Thief is the Chinese-American diaspora art heist that I never knew I needed.

To be truthful, the heists in this novel are secondary. Li’s debut novel is really an exploration of the impact of colonisation and the melancholic experience of diaspora.

There are elements of Ocean’s Eleven and the Fast and Furious franchise within the story and I appreciated Li’s nods to classic action movies but at its core, Portrait of a Thief is about a group of immigrant kids in their twenties each struggling with the burden of living up to their parents’ expectations and the responsibility of having to support their family. I’m half Filipino on my mother’s side and I found myself really relating to the emotions and struggles that the characters in the novel deal with, including feeling disconnected from your roots but at the same very protective over them.

As Li highlights, being the child of immigrant means taking responsibility for your family. You carry the heavy weight of all the hopes and dreams of your lineage, which is something we see particularly in the character of Alex. Li describes Alex as being confused about “ how to be the daughter she was supposed to be, her parents’ American Dream. How to untagle parts of her that were Chinese and the parts of her that were American, how both so often felt like neither “, which really hit me. For me, there’s a lot to relate to in this novel and Li explores the complexity of identity and the history of colonial rule with such eloquence that I did get misty-eyed a few times. I mean, Daniel’s dad, anyone? The sibling rivalry between Will and Irene? I could go on!

I’ve seen people complain that the novel was underwhelming. If you go in expecting an action-packed story, you will probably be disappointed. This isn’t a heist novel. It’s a novel about the immigrant experience. Yes, there are heists as the characters attempt to reclaim art that the West stole and there are occasional fun moments – Irene is a badass – but the heists are very muted and devoid of typical thrill and tension. While Li’s cast is a group of reckless college students who have a lot to lose rather than seasoned criminals, it would have been great to see more Ocean’s Eleven flair. However, I get what Li was going for with the heist plot even if it did feel a bit flimsy and not fully fleshed out at times.

Nonetheless, this is a stunning debut. It’s so heartfelt. Li’s writing is beautifully atmospheric and she truly captured what it feels like to be in your twenties when you’re trying to figure out who you want to be, with the added struggle of lack of belonging both in the West and your parents’ home country and needing to do whatever you can to assimilate and survive.

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