UCLA

In A Map of Betrayal Ha Jin interweaves his personal experience with his historical and political concerns to create a novel based loosely on the case of Larry Wu-Tai Chin, a PRC spy who infiltrated the CIA for thirty years. The protagonist, Gary Shang, is a composite of Chin and Jin. The author infuses his sensibility as an accidental immigrant caught between worlds in mapping Gary’s geographical, psychological, and linguistic odysseys. The trope of doubling runs through the text, underscoring the themes of duplicity and self-division and creating a contrapuntal score. Thematically, the novel interrogates the relationship between the state and the individual by exploring reciprocal betrayal, dual national allegiance, bilingualism, repressed historical trauma, political and personal loyalties—themes connecting Jin, Chin, Gary and his grandson, Ben. Structurally, it alternates between Gary’s third person account and her daughter’s first person account, covering two historical periods, representing different generations, and orchestrating multiple national(ist) perspectives.