Portrait Of A Thief (Grace D. Li)
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Product details
Grace D. Li
Large Paperback
Published 2022
Oceans ElevenmeetsThe FarewellinPortrait 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 impossibleand illegaljob offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to strom Beijing centuries ago.
His crew is every heist archetype one can imagineor 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 theyve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down.
Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollarsand a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything theyve dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted attempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.
Equal parts beautiful, thoughtful, and thriltural heist and an examination of Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary critique of the lingering effects of colonialism.
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