The pandemic broke out and Grace D. Li was finishing her freshman year as a medical student. She found herself stuck at home, attending classes on Zoom and unable to set foot in the hospital.
Was the medical catastrophe most devastating in the last century, and I mightn’t do anything to help”, he recalls.
THE BIRTH OF “Portrait of a Thief”
frustrated, the medical student from Stanford, 26, turned to a passion project waiting for him on his computer: a novel he had started a few years earlier. The result is “Portrait of a Thief” (Portrait of a thief). A heist adventure coming out this week that’s all regarding fast-paced action. Fast cars and a thoughtful exploration of colonialism and the complexities of Chinese diaspora identities.
The story of why Li turned to fiction in the midst of a crisis, and followed two career paths apparently opposite. It has as many twists as Li’s novel, born out of her experiences as a scientist and writer, born in the United States and of Chinese ethnicity.
For Li, who this summer begins his third year at the faculty of medicineyour career options are not contradictory.
“Despite the differences between medicine and writing,” he says during a recent conversation. “both require deep and thoughtful thinking regarding the world and the people who inhabit it”.
What is “Portrait of a Thief” regarding?
The premise of “Portrait of a Thief” is seemingly simple. The protagonist of the novelWill Chen, is an art history student at Harvard. Who is a witness to the robbery of chinese artifacts of a campus museum by an organized team that leaves you with an intriguing business card.
That experience and a racist encounter with the police officers investigating the crime prompted Chen to contact the Executive Director of a shadowy conglomerate backed by the Chinese government. The CEO offers Chen and her selected group of students $50 million to stealn five bronze heads of the zodiac that once adorned a fountain in the Old Summer Palace in Beijing.
HIS ARRIVAL ON NETFLIX…
“Portrait of a Thief” attracted enough expectation that Netflix chose the book for a television adaptation, with Li serving as executive producer. This is an exciting, albeit liminal, space for a student of medicine committed to equity in health for neglected patients and with a book tour which includes an April 24 appearance at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.
He says of his debut:
“I hope that ‘Portrait of a Thief’ invites conversation regarding the ways history continues to influence the present. As well as illuminating the complexities and joys of the Chinese-American experience, all wrapped up in a story as exciting as a heist.”
Li also shared that he is starting a new novel. Continuing the blend of art and science, he plans to set it at, where else? Stanford Medical School.
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