“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

"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 Private Citizens

"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

“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