Portrait of a Thief is told from the points of view of five Chinese-American college students. Will Chen, an art history student at Harvard, is approached by a Chinese super-corporation to steal five sculptures (fountain heads looted from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing) and repatriate them to China. Will recruits his sister and three friends to accomplish the deeds, but none of these kids’ skillsets really prepare them for the job.
People wanting a pure “heist” story will be disappointed. This book is more about the relationships of the students and how they deal with their families’ pasts and their own biculturalism. Some feel more connected with China than with America, and vice versa. They all feel the weight of being the first generation to become American, and they carry all the hopes of their families. I saw in this book echoes of The Tiger Mom’s Tale by Lyn Liao Butler (Berkley, July 6, 2021), in which Lexa Thomas, a mixed-race Taiwanese-American woman, tries to reclaim her cultural identity.
As a former artist who retains a love of art and art history, I appreciate the descriptions of the art and the museums the students were to rob, especially Will’s connections to both making and looking at art. I also feel strongly about the repatriation of art stolen—as these fountain heads were as Europeans raped the cultural identity of China.
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Portrait of a Thief (Tiny Reparations Books, April 5, 2022) is available through:
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