Flashlight

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker• Time• New York• The Washington Post • NPR • Los Angeles Times • The Guardian• Vanity Fair • Town & Country • Oprah Daily• Financial Times• The Economist• Book Riot• Kirkus Reviews • Electric Literature • PEN America • The Chicago Public Library “EXPLOSIVE.” (The New York Times Book Review**)** • “GORGEOUS.” (New York)• “SHOCKING.” (NPR) • “DEVASTATING.” (The Washington Post) • “ASTONISHING.” (The Atlantic) • “MARVELOUS.” (NBC’s Weekend Today in New York) 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 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. What really happened to Louisa’s father? Shifting perspectives across time and character and turning back again and again to that night by the sea, Flashlight chases the shock waves of one family’s catastrophe, even as they are swept up in the invisible currents of history. 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.