Portrait of a Thief

Author: by Grace D. Li

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Publication date: 04/05/2022

Pages: 384

Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

Estimated delivery time: 5 days

If you’re looking for a novel full of heists, travel and exploration of Chinese American identity, then look no further than Portrait of a Thief . This thrilling tale follows Will, a Harvard student comfortably living in his carefully curated role, but when asked to pull together a team to heist five priceless paintings stolen from Beijing centuries prior, he finds himself the leader of the crew, with fifty million dollars and their futures on the line. It’s the perfect novel to escape into!

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize

Named A Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by * Marie Claire * * Washington Post * * Vulture * *NBC News* * Buzzfeed * * Veranda * * PopSugar* *Paste* *The Millions* *Bustle* *Crimereads* Goodreads* * Bookbub* *Boston.com* and more!

"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."
—New York Times Book Review

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 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.