Portrait of a Thief

Portrait of a Thief (2022) is a heist novel written by Grace D. Li. It pairs action and suspense with literary examinations of Art Colonization and Repatriation, Diaspora and Belonging, and The Weight of the American Dream on the Children of Immigrants. Li was inspired to write Portrait of a Thief by news stories about Chinese artifacts stolen from Western museums and her own experiences as a Chinese American, seeking belonging but not feeling fully embraced by either culture. Li’s debut novel is a New York Times bestseller and a Steph Curry Book Club Pick, and was listed among National Public Radio’s Best Books of 2022. The novel is being developed by Sugar23 for a Netflix series, with Li as an executive producer.

This guide uses the e-book edition of the text published in 2022 by Tiny Reparations Books. Pagination may differ from print editions.

Content Warning: Portrait of a Thief discusses colonization and racism.

Plot Summary

Portrait of a Thief revolves around five Chinese Americans in their early twenties. The protagonist is Will Chen, an art history major at Harvard. The story takes place in present day, approximately 2022, when the novel was published, and in cities across the US, Europe, and China. It is told in multiple third-person perspectives, matching the five main characters.

In the opening scene, Will is questioned by law enforcement after a robbery occurs at Boston’s Sackler Museum where he works part time. The artifacts stolen were those referenced in an article he wrote for Harvard’s student newspaper about Chinese art and Western imperialism, placing suspicion on him. Shortly after, he is contacted by a secretive Chinese billionaire and invited to Beijing, where he and four friends are offered $50 million to steal five artifacts from five museums in Western cities. The artifacts are bronze fountainheads looted from China’s Old Summer Palace by Western invaders in the 19th century. The museums displaying the artifacts refuse to acknowledge China’s right to them, but those in power in China want them back.

Will’s crew is made up of classic heist archetypes: The con artist is Will’s sister Irene, a public policy major at Duke University who can talk her way out of any situation; the thief is Daniel Liang, Will’s best friend and a pre-med student with steady hands and a skill for picking locks; the getaway driver is Lily Wu, Irene’s roommate at Duke and a talented street racer; and the hacker is Alex Huang, a friend of Will’s who dropped out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is a software engineer for Google. Will is the leader, equally inspired by his love of art and outrage at its colonization by museum curators with imperialist mentalities. Daniel’s father Yaoxian poses a complication. He’s the only Asian art expert on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Art Crimes Team, meaning he’ll be the one called to investigate their robberies. Alex manages to hack into his laptop, gaining access to the FBI’s files and allowing her to monitor his investigations.

After a month of planning, the crew travels to Drottningholm Palace in Stockholm, Sweden, home to one of the five bronze fountainheads. Alex distracts local police by setting fire to a row of cars owned by leaders of Sweden’s white nationalist movement. Will, Irene, and Daniel enter the palace and steal the fountainhead with a smash-and-grab strategy, then make their getaway via the lake behind the castle, where Lily waits with a speedboat. The crew celebrates their victory.

The next heist will take place at the Château de Fontainebleau in Paris, France, where Lily enters a high-stakes street race to win their getaway car. When the crew enters the museum, they realize someone beat them to the artifact. Windows and display cases are broken, and various Old Summer Palace artifacts are gone. With the police on their way, the crew has barely enough time to escape.

By hacking into the museum’s security footage, the crew connects the other thieves to the street racer from whom Lily won their getaway car. They’re able to find him and arrange a meeting, where they learn he and a colleague are members of China’s social elite. Will offers a trade: He’ll give the pair all the Old Summer Palace artifacts from Drottningholm Palace, except for the fountainhead, in exchange for the Paris fountainhead. Both crews agree and make the swap.

Back at home, everything falls apart when Daniel’s father tells him that he knows the truth. After seeing backup security footage of the heists, he recognized his son’s voice. Will convinces him not to turn the crew in by promising they won’t attempt any more heists. When he receives an offer to interview at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) for an assistant curator position, he convinces his crew to do one more heist.

Will, Irene, and Alex break into the Met in the middle of the night after disabling the security system. As they approach the bronze fountainhead, the lights come on and they find themselves surrounded by the FBI. They’re handcuffed and interrogated by Daniel’s father. All three say they were merely trespassing, since they hadn’t stolen anything yet. As they’re questioned, a breaking news story circulates with proof that the Met and other major museums were complicit in the trafficking of stolen artifacts. The evidence was stolen from a hard drive at the Met by Lily and Daniel while the others played their part. Being in FBI custody when the news broke is their alibi. Daniel’s father lets the three go, saying that trespassing doesn’t warrant FBI involvement.

After an article detailing the stolen artifacts is published, public pressure leads the museums displaying the three remaining fountainheads to return them to China. Museum transparency improves, giving Will and his crew a true victory against injustice. Their benefactor pays them $50 million.

Six months later, Will is about to graduate from Harvard and starts a romance with Lily; later, his paintings are put on display at the Sackler Museum. Daniel is about to graduate from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and looks forward to starting at Stanford Medical School; in the meantime, he and his father make strides in healing their fractured relationship. Alex quits her unfulfilling job and returns to MIT to finish her degree; she also starts a romance with Irene, who was elected student body president at Duke and opts out of her summer internship with a consulting firm to instead work for a political campaign in Washington, DC. The crew plans to get together in Beijing and then Paris later in the summer, and they all await bright futures.