— A REVIEW OF PORTRAIT OF A THIEF BY GRACE D. LI —
Portrait of a ThiefGrace D. Lireleases April 5, 2022Tiny Reparations BooksView Synopsis »Ocean’s Eleven meets The Farewell in Portrait of a Thief, a lush, lyrical heist novel inspired by the true story of Chinese art vanishing from Western museums, about diaspora, the colonization of art, and the complexity of the Chinese American identity
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 that has always been his parents’ American Dream. But when a shadowy Chinese corporation 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 conman: Irene Chen, Will’s sister and 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 student 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.
With poetic language, a fun, commercial hook, and a plot that spans the Western world, Portrait of a Thief is both a cultural heist and an examination of the Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary critique of the lingering effects of colonialism that readers won’t want to miss.
I knew I would enjoy Portrait of a Thief, but I don’t think I expected just how much of an impact this book would make on me.
I have been following this book since Grace first tweeted about writing a book based on a very interesting GQ article called The Great Chinese Art Heist — an article about Chinese art being stolen from Western museums and the possible motives behind the thefts. I always love a good heist story and with the premise including a cast of Chinese American college students, I was excited as a Chinese Canadian myself.
Portrait of a Thief follows a cast of five — Will, Irene, Daniel, Lily and Alex — who each have their own talents to bring to the heist. Will (the leader and mastermind) is a Harvard senior studying art history; Irene (the con artist) is Will’s sister and public policy student at Duke; Daniel (the thief) studies premed at UCLA; Lily (the getaway driver) is Irene’s roommate and a mechanical engineering student at Duke; Alex (the hacker) is Will’s kind of ex and MIT drop out that now works in Silicon Valley. Together, they work together to steal the Old Summer Palace fountain heads and repatriate them for a cool sum of 50 million dollars. In doing so, the cast confronts their complicated relationships with colonialism, being a diaspora child and with each other.
In terms of the book’s similarities to the article, this book is of course fiction, but it takes inspiration from the very real situation that was proposed in the article. Western museums refuse to return the looted art in their museums and so some have taken it upon themselves to liberate the art. If it was simply a matter of money, the art would have been repatriated long ago.
I knew I would love this book based on the fact that it was a heist alone. However, I wasn’t expecting to feel so seen by this book. I’m very used to finding bits of myself in characters and relating to it — I read mostly fantasy books after all. This is probably the first time that I could see myself on the page and see my own experiences reflected back at me.
The cast reflects on their own relationship with their Chinese heritage a lot throughout the book and each character has their own complicated relationship with it. Alex’s grandparents moved to NYC and she knows her history; Lily’s parents moved to Texas and they never talk about their past, so she feels disconnected and alone. This book has put into words a lot of the feelings that I have myself, in connecting with my culture and the relationship I have with it. I see so much of myself in these characters — in the way that I barely know Chinese because I stopped going to classes in grade 4, in the way that I don't know much Chinese mythology at all, in the way that I grew up envious of my classmates who would go back to Hong Kong every summer.
“Twenty years, and she had never called China hers. How could she when she had never been? She did not know its songs, its roads, its rivers. She did not know the terms of address for kin, the names of provinces, anything she ought.”
“Loss was the hesitation in his voice when he spoke his mother tongue, the myths he did not know, a childhood that felt so vast and alien from his parents’ that he did not know how to cross it.”
“The China of her parents’ past was cold, unfamiliar, full of unspeakable loss. What did she care for the glory of China, its right to reclaim what had once been theirs?”
“Diaspora had always been an unmooring, a boat cast free. She did not know how to find her way back. She never did.”
Quotes Subject to Change
This book also, of course, deals in the complicated topic of repatriation. The whole premise of the book is based upon the fact that in museums, there is a lot of art with unknown origins or perhaps violent and colonial origins, that should be repatriated. One of the most famous cases of the struggle for repatriation is the Parthenon marbles, where the British government stated last year that it is up to the British museum to return the marbles, as it is not a governmental institution. The British Museum asserts that the Parthenon marbles were acquired legally and with permission and the Greek government continues to pursue the Marbles' repatriation. Another notable case of repatriation is the Benin bronzes, which are mentioned in the book itself. Some countries have begun the process of repatriating the bronzes, like Germany where the first of the Bronzes will be expected to return this year. However, there are still hundreds of bronzes scattered across the world as a result of the British looting them in the 1800s.
Will studies art history and as we read through the book, he encounters the way institutions see themselves as a paragon of objectivity and guardians of history, when so many of their artifacts and exhibits are a result of colonialism. It's the whole reason he desires to repatriate the Old Summer Palace fountain heads in the first place with his friends, aside from the money. Reading this book really made me think more about repatriation and the way that I look at museums myself. I will definitely be thinking more critically next time I find myself in a museum.
On an aside, the characterization in this book is so good. Will is a romantic and has a "historical" view of looking at things the entire time he planned the heists. He is viewing his own present actions of how the heists would look historically. Irene is pragmatic and the realist and she tries to plan for the worst -- in case they get caught. I really enjoyed reading each of these characters and their point of view.
There is a teensy tiny bit of romance in this book which I do enjoy, especially the WLW enemies to lovers couple.
There are so many beautiful quotes in this book and if I were to share them all, it would take pages. I wrote like 20 pages of notes for this book in my notebook while reading Portrait of a Thief. This book confronts the way we look at art and their provenance in cultural institions and asks, when do they get to go home? It examines Chinese American identity and lays bare the feelings of growing up a part of the diaspora. This book really does mean a lot to me and I think I'll be thinking about it for a long time to come.
I really, truly, genuinely hope that you all give this book a chance and give it a read for yourselves. I can't wait to hold this book in my hands and flip through the pages of it.
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