Flashlight
Jul 2025 · Random House
eBook
464
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
infoThis book will become available on 10 July 2025. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this eBook
A thrilling, globe-spanning novel that mines questions of memory, language, identity, and family, Flashlight is a sweeping masterpiece illuminating the hidden corners of twentieth century history and their profound effects on individual lives.
One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal Japanese town while her father Serk, a Korean émigré, completes an academic secondment from his American university. When Louisa wakes up hours later, she has washed up on the beach and her father is missing, likely drowned.
The disappearance of Louisa’s father shatters their small family unit, and she and her American mother Anne return to the US profoundly changed. This traumatic event reverberates across time and space, as we follow mother and daughter trying to go on with their lives, while the mystery of what really happened to Serk that night slowly unravels.
Moving between the post-war Korean immigrant community in Japan, to suburban America, and the North Korean regime, this is the astonishing story of one family swept up in the tides of twentieth century history.
One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal Japanese town while her father Serk, a Korean émigré, completes an academic secondment from his American university. When Louisa wakes up hours later, she has washed up on the beach and her father is missing, likely drowned.
The disappearance of Louisa’s father shatters their small family unit, and she and her American mother Anne return to the US profoundly changed. This traumatic event reverberates across time and space, as we follow mother and daughter trying to go on with their lives, while the mystery of what really happened to Serk that night slowly unravels.
Moving between the post-war Korean immigrant community in Japan, to suburban America, and the North Korean regime, this is the astonishing story of one family swept up in the tides of twentieth century history.
About the author
Susan Choi’s first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian-American Literary Award for Fiction. Her second novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize. Her third novel, A Person of Interest, was a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award. In 2010 she was named the inaugural recipient of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award. Her fourth novel, My Education, received a 2014 Lammy Award. Her fifth novel, Trust Exercise, won the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction – and was a US bestseller (published by Serpent’s Tail in the UK). She serves as a trustee of PEN America and teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
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