Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li is a story of 5 college going students planning a heist to reclaim an art taken from China during colonialism. The story feels like Oceans 11 meets The Fast and the Furious with a group of Chinese American students. While the heist plot-line is absolutely engaging, it’s likewise absolutely impossible on occasion (particularly on the technology side). This group succeeds practically on dumb luck. Yet putting the technology to the side, the work Portrait of a Thief is doing as commentary on colonialism and diaspora is first class. I am eagerly waiting to see Portrait of a Thief come to life on Netflix.
The story of “Portrait of a Thief” is told through five POVs. who are immediately gathered as a group tasked with taking back extremely valuable pieces of art from Western museums that legitimately belong to China. I think the most awesome aspect of the book was character development. These are college kids, they each have issues, objectives, and wants. They each are struggling to understand what their identity is and what it actually means to be a person of Chinese descent. I additionally think that the author did an excellent job showing each person. They were all distinct and very unique in relation to one another, yet believable.
The writing is fabulous and rich. I was impressed with how topics of colonialism and imperialism were addressed inside the heist story. Each one of the five characters made an incredible and complex group. I truly liked everyone of them, and it was amusing to watch them risk all that in attempt to take the sculptures in different nations. The story was very interesting during the heist attempts, yet without uncovering anything to ruin it for you, things will change en route. I will say that on occasion, the story was a little slow, with certain things being repetitive.
Overall! Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li was an engaging, entertaining and to some degree complex story, that did kept me engaged throughout.
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