A Map of Betrayal: A Novel (Vintage International)

It’s difficult to believe that you are reading fiction when you read A Map of Betrayal by Ha Jin. You may also entertain the preconceived notion that you find foreign books boring or dense with historical references you will not understand. You will not need to understand Chinese history to be fascinated by this story, although you may learn some things about China.This author has classified this story as a work of fiction but my gut keeps saying that “only the names have been changed”. There is no reason to believe that my gut is talented at perception: this willingness to “suspend my disbelief” is most likely due to the author’s skills at storytelling.Ha Jin chooses Lilian Shang to be our narrator. She has in her possession the diaries left by her father. She already knows that her Dad, called Weimin in China but Gary Shang in the US, translator for the CIA in Washington, DC, was actually a Chinese spy. He was exposed and arrested just as he was considering retirement. Lilian has all the articles from the newspapers about his trial. She knows he was found guilty and sent to prison.As a child Lilian did not ever see any signs that her father was a spy. Her Mom, Nellie, an American, also did not have any knowledge of her husband’s covert activities, although Gary betrays Nellie in another sense. Lilian learns, among other things, that her father has another wife in China; a wife he is never able to see. He has children he knows nothing about and grandchildren.The story does not show us a cold-blooded spy who hated the country he was embedded in or even a man who came to betray his native China. Gary Shang is full of complex emotions about the wife he left behind. He is led to believe that she is being taken care of financially due to the risks he takes as a spy. He is led to believe that he is some kind of national hero, although his work is known only to those in power. When Lilian goes to China to find her father’s other family, her relatives, and to teach at a university in Beijing, she learns how China really treated her Dad’s first wife and her Dad, who betrayed his adopted country, America, but never the country of his birth.I have always been “gobsmacked” by Mao and his Cultural Revolution. He just tipped China like a chessboard and tossed all of the pieces around. Except that China is a giant chessboard with millions of people. Mao took scholars and made them work the farms and he put the farmers in charge of local governments. Talk about redistribution! As you can imagine, if you don’t already know, havoc and misery ensued. This Cultural Revolution may not have hit Gary Shang, he only read about it in the press, but it certainly affected his family.If you think Gary Shang had the best of both worlds until he was arrested you would be wrong. His diaries reveal his loneliness and his guilt. Ha Jin has given us a new take on a spy story and still in the back of my mind I feel that this could easily be a true story masquerading as fiction. The author gets to make that call, however, and if there had been a real spy in America like Gary Shang he would be known to all of us, although by another name.Once again this is nothing like the Bourne books or 007 or stories full of action and modern spycraft. The way Gary Shang was a spy required a loyalty and a quiet dedication that is difficult to see as heroic under the circumstances, but that surely was of great value to his beloved China. It was a life that involved periods of great internal struggle for Gary Shang and one that might prove impossible for today’s citizens who are addicted to instant gratification and acknowledgment. Trudging silently along, with only the occasional desire to revolt against the machine, is hardly our style. This is a book of subtle understandings. Ha Jin is an author who is always on my wish list.

This was my most recent read for my in-person book club and I have to admit that I didn't expect to like it. It wasn't anything to do with this book, it just seemed a bad time of the year for me to read a book that I thought would require a lot of brain power (you know, the end of the school year. Parents will understand that!). I was pleasantly surprised that this book read easily and that I didn't find it taxing and, ultimately, enjoyed it more than I thought it would.There are two stories in this book--that of Lilian's father, Gary, who is a Chinese spy operating in the US in the mid-20th century, and Lilian's contemporary journey to track down her Chinese family she never knew. These two stories are expertly entwined and I can't separate them enough to say if I liked one better than the other.Gary is a fascinating character. He definitely isn't your typical spy and he blends in well in the United States. In many ways, this book reminded me of the TV show The Americans (even though I'm only a few episodes into it), except that Gary never hates the United States. Instead, he develops a genuine affinity for the US and sees his spying as advantageous for both countries.The contemporary plot--that involving Lilian's search for her Chinese relatives--clearly evoked China for me. However, it was not the almost lyrical China of the Empires that I'm used to. Instead it was the harsh reality of the cinder block world of Communist China. This was an adjustment for me, but I think it was a good one for me to make. What Jin presents is a reality, one that I think most Americans have yet to face.I did find one thing frustrating when reading this. The reader knows how Gary's story is going to end, but it seems like we never get there. When we finally get to that point, it seems rushed and very little is actually said about it. I believe that if Jin had expanded on this point it would have resulted in a more well-rounded story.While I found this to be a satisfying read, I should also put out that not everyone in my book club enjoyed this book. Some of my cohorts found it dry and dull while others were never able to connect with the main characters. I share this only to give fair warning that this is a book that will affect readers very differently. Personally, though, I found it well worth the time and effort to read.

All in the familyNot a spy novel a novel about a spyHa Jin’s A Map of Betrayal is a good story, but not an exciting read. It unfolds as the American born daughter of Gary Shang, a convicted CIA mole and a hero in Communist China, works her way through her father’s discovered diary after the death of her parents. The father had been hired on as a translator in Shanghai by an intelligence agent, before the Americans were ban after the Revolution, and moved along step by step until critically placed within the Agency in D.C., a good man ironically for both sides of the conflict. It is this thread that holds the reader’s interest, a spy with a heart trying to be faithful to his homeland by providing critical information about the currents of power within the Washington administrations in the hope of bring the two sides closer together and avoid devastating conflicts. A story really of a Family that becomes multidimensional, the ethnic and familial ties to China and the required by his handlers bonds with American wife and child.Ha Jin gives as a back drop a fair rendering of the turbulent 30 year period from 1949 to the late seventies, dealing with the collectivization of agriculture, the Great Leap Forward and it massive starvation and the dismemberment of The Cultural Revolution. His section on Mao Ze Dong’s manipulations of the two great powers, Soviet Union and USA, shows Mao as something of a master in international relations a theme one finds as well in Kissinger’s accounts of the periodIn all an interesting treatment of one of Ha Jin’s reoccurring themes on how things seldom are as they seem.