The Expat

A Novel

Hansen Shi

A fresh and vivid new voice brings a contemporary edge to the classic espionage novel.

A New York Times "Best Thrillers of the Year (So Far)”

At twenty-six, Princeton grad Michael Wang is trapped. Stifled under the bamboo ceiling at General Motors, he’s working quietly on a breakthrough in self-driving car technology that he hopes will catapult him out of obscurity. Disaffected and largely friendless in San Francisco, he’s dogged by resentment towards the Ivy Leaguers who never accepted him and his colleagues at GM who see him as passive and faceless.

But all that changes when one night, on a freelance coding platform, he meets the beautiful and enigmatic Vivian. She’s been admiring Michael’s work from afar and represents a rival Beijing tech company that’s eager to poach him as a newly minted executive, liberate his ideas from the stagnant confines of GM, and help him find success in the wilder, less regulated business environs of China.

For Michael—alienated and underappreciated—it’s no choice at all. But as soon as Michael arrives in Beijing, Vivian vanishes. When the true nature of his new position is made clear, Michael finds himself enmeshed in a dangerous web of industrial espionage and counterintelligence. Caught between two countries that view him as a pawn, where do his loyalties lie?

Piercingly intelligent and ruthlessly contemporary, The Expat is both a white-knuckle spy novel and a thrilling exploration of the myth of meritocracy, high-tech immigration, U.S.-China conflicts, identity, and disaffection that asks: in the pursuit of self-actualization, who will we betray and how far will we go?

Hansen Shi is a writer and technology investor. He studied literature at Harvard College where he was on the Fiction Board of the Harvard Advocate. He currently works as a venture capitalist in New York City. 

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Endorsements & Reviews

"In The Expat, Hansen Shi’s taut novel of espionage and alienation, Michael Wang is a second-generation Chinese American caught between two cultures and comfortable in neither. In a John le Carré novel, he would be a minor character, a walk-on pawn in a larger geopolitical game. But Shi, who works as a venture capitalist in New York City, has elevated a bit part into a leading role with verve and sensibility. The novel is a fantastic portrait of a man wending his way through a maze of his own bad choices.”  The New York Times Book Review

"The Expat by Hansen Shi is narrated by Michael Wang, the American-born son of Chinese immigrants. The hero of Mr. Shi’s assured debut gets thrust into a treacherous game of geopolitics." Wall Street Journal

“The main character in Hansen Shi's excellent debut spy novel is an alienated young man named Michael Wang. He’s a first generation Chinese American a few years out of Princeton who’s hit the bamboo ceiling at General Motors in San Francisco, where he’s been working on technology for self-driving cars. Enter a femme fatale named Vivian who flatters Michael into believing that his brilliance will be recognized by her enigmatic boss in China. Once Michael settles into life in Beijing, however, he realizes he’s been tapped, not as a prodigy, but a patsy. I wanted this moody espionage tale to go on longer.” Maureen Corrigan, NPR

“In the complex figure of Michael Wang, Hansen Shi has found a character embodying major concerns of the 21st century, from the challenges of class injustice to the rapaciousness of corporations, from the dizzyingly rapid rise of China to the tightening grip of technology on modern life. Calling to mind Grahame Greene and John le Carré's later work, this riveting spy yarn deftly examines the interplay of political history and inter-generational trauma and humiliation. A magnificent debut.” Zia Haider Rahman, author of In the Light of What We Know

"Relentlessly intelligent and global in scope, The Expat has the electric hum of a long spring stretched tight. The concerns—authentic existence in a hyperreal economy and physical survival—put Hansen Shi in the company of Tom McCarthy and Nick Harkaway. Thrillingly ambitious!" Will Chancellor, author of A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall 

“Hansen Shi’s debut uses a taut, piercingly of-the-moment spy story as a staging area for a beautifully layered, bitingly funny exploration of identity, the legacies of trauma and alienation, and the way that nations and the clashes between them can consume and co-opt every corner of a life. THE EXPAT is pure espionage pleasure but also an enthralling dispatch from a world scarred by seething, barely submerged conflicts, both ideological and personal. A triumphant first novel.” Paul Yoon, author of Run Me To Earth and The Hive and the Honey

"In The Expat, Hansen Shi vividly reimagines the figure of the Asian American spy as a disaffected tech worker, offering an urgent, contemporary twist on a character that has inspired such authors as Suki Kim, Chang Rae Lee, and Viet Thanh Nguyen. Shi's novel is as smart as it is engrossing, deftly melding the intrigue of the espionage thriller with a haunting exploration of the seductions and the disappointments of national and ethnic affiliations."

Ju Yon Kim, Harvard University, author of The Racial Mundane

"The Expat is, for starters, a first-rate novel of modern spycraft, complete with honeypots, dark web recruiters, triple agents, and international proxy wars. But it's also a brilliant novel about a certain brand of Asian-American thwartedness—how the thirst for recognition can make you vulnerable to your own self-mythology, and how people who are denied visibility may exploit their invisibility. Like a Tesla, The Expat is sleek, fast, and unexpectedly deadly, and Hansen Shi's talent is so giant that it's a bit suspicious... I wonder who he's working for?" Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection and Private Citizens