Flashlight
by Choi, Susan
Product Type: Bargain Books
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List price: $19.00
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About
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Time, New York, The Washington Post, NPR, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Guardia, Vanity Fair, Elle, Town & Country, Oprah Daily, The New York Post, 48 Hills, Financial Time, The Economist, Esquire (UK), Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, PEN America, The Chicago Public Library, Los Angeles Review of Books
One of President Obama's Favorite Books of 2025
One of President Obama's Favorite Books of 2025
Short-listed for the Booker Prize
Long-listed for the National Book Award
Long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal
Short-listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction
Finalist for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards
Finalist for the Orwell Prize
A TeaTime and Get Lit Book Club Pick
One summer night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the breakwater. Her father is carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later, Louisa is found on the beach, soaked to the skin, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old.
Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past. Her father, Serk, is Korean, but was born and raised in Japan; he lost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to North Korea. Her American mother, Anne, is estranged from her family. But now it is just Anne and Louisa, adrift and facing the challenges of ordinary life in the wake of catastrophe. United, separated, and also repelled by their mutual grief, they attempt to move on. But they cannot escape the echoes of that night. What really happened to Louisa’s father?
A monumental new novel from the National Book Award winner Susan Choi, Flashlight spans decades and continents in a spellbinding, heart-gripping investigation of family, loss, memory, and the ways in which we are shaped by what we cannot see.
One summer night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the breakwater. Her father is carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later, Louisa is found on the beach, soaked to the skin, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old.
Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past. Her father, Serk, is Korean, but was born and raised in Japan; he lost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to North Korea. Her American mother, Anne, is estranged from her family. But now it is just Anne and Louisa, adrift and facing the challenges of ordinary life in the wake of catastrophe. United, separated, and also repelled by their mutual grief, they attempt to move on. But they cannot escape the echoes of that night. What really happened to Louisa’s father?
A monumental new novel from the National Book Award winner Susan Choi, Flashlight spans decades and continents in a spellbinding, heart-gripping investigation of family, loss, memory, and the ways in which we are shaped by what we cannot see.
“EXPLOSIVE.” (The New York Times Book Review)
“GORGEOUS.” (New York)
“SHOCKING.” (NPR)
“GORGEOUS.” (New York)
“SHOCKING.” (NPR)