Flashlight

A novel tracing a father’s disappearance across time, nations, and memory, from the author of Trust Exercise.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 Midwestern family after a reckless adventure in her youth. And then there is Tobias, Anne’s illegitimate son, whose reappearance in their lives will have astonishing consequences.

Long-listed for the Booker Prize and the National Book Award

“The first major American novel to be published this year.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“Gorgeous . . . Almost impossibly heartbreaking.” —Sam Worley, New York Magazine

A Must-Read: The New York Times, New York Magazine, Time, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The Chicago Review of Books, Forbes, Literary Hub, and Town & Country

“A major world writer . . . Choi is in thrilling command.” ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“Devastating.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“Ranks among her best work.” —Hamilton Cain, Los Angeles Times