Author Ha Jin's exile in the US helped him understand the spy protagonist of his latest novel

In 1985 the top-ranking Chinese spy Larry Chin Wu-tai was captured by the FBI. Chin was a gambler, a slumlord and a womaniser. He was also the CIA's most valued linguist and had worked for the intelligence unit for 30 years. On the day of sentencing, prison guards found Chin in his cell, dead, a plastic trash bag tied around his head which had been sealed with his shoelaces. He had apparently committed suicide.

"How can you forget that?" asks author Ha Jin who, nearly three decades after the event, has delved into the murky world of Chinese-American espionage for his new novel, A Map of Betrayal.

However, those expecting a James Bond-style yarn from the National Book Award winner will be disappointed. There are no cloaks or daggers, no clichéd seductive women and no martinis. Instead, this is a psychological portrait of a man caught between two countries and two masters. Inspired by Chin, but not enslaved to his story, it is a work of fiction that also touches on Jin's experiences as a Chinese immigrant to the US.

"The major theme in Chinese society, even in literature, is the contradiction and conflict between the country and the individual," Jin says. "For me this is a painful thing and in a way I can share [Chin's] pain. I haven't returned to China since I came out [here] so I could feel his suffering. I think I could understand him."

Born Jin Xuefei in 1956 in Liaoning province to parents who both served in the military, Jin grew up under the shadow of Mao Zedong and witnessed the cruelty of the Cultural Revolution. He was 10 years old when the madness started and remembers: "I saw how they beat their elders. Suddenly society became lawless and people's anger was released. There was no religion and people were not afraid of any power other than human beings."

By the age of 14 Jin had signed up to serve in the People's Liberation Army. He was sent to the border between China and the Soviet Union, a place on the edge of two vast communist powers where death was commonplace, food was scarce and soldiers had to fend off frostbite in the sub-zero winters.