2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction (longlist)
2025 Booker Prize (shortlist)
2025 National Book Award for Fiction (longlist)
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker• Time• New York• The Washington Post • NPR • Los Angeles Times • The Guardian• 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)
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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
‘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)
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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"In this superbly crafted book, the fraught geopolitics of family life-the official secrets, the acts of espionage, the diplomatic failures-are set against the intimacies, grievances, conflicting memories, and unmet needs of national allegiance. Ferociously smart and full of surprises, Flashlight is thrilling to the last." - Eleanor Catton
"Flashlight is instantly bewitching: a mysterious family tragedy whose solution reaches beyond psychology into geopolitics. Susan Choi's fictional investigation reveals a writer at the height of her spectacular powers." - Jennifer Egan
"Susan Choi casts a fascinating light on the troubled borders between identities, countries, historical periods and sometimes even her admirable sentences as she, so expertly, tells the story of a family that can't quite find its moorings." - Romesh Gunesekera
"In a brilliant feat of storytelling, both intimate and sweeping, Susan Choi has created a profoundly moving epic that blends a tender family portrait with a haunting examination of the Korean diaspora. Flashlight is that rare novel that has everything I want in ?ction: gorgeous writing, fascinating characters I fell in love with, an immersive, addictive story with an ending that made me gasp, then cry. I'm in awe." - Angie Kim
"Flashlight is a sensitive familial portrait, rigorous in its scope and complexity of feeling. Susan Choi is a master of rendering relationships with utter particularity." - Raven Leilani
"A shapeshifting novel that reconfigures reality at every turn, Susan Choi's Flashlight is a powerful beam searching through the cavernous depths of alienation, of the cruel, fierce love binding a singular family, and the historical reverberations of unthinkable displacement and loss. With masterful control, Choi charts us through a journey that defies every expectation-its cumulative effect is epic, devastating, and incandescent." - Aube Rey Lescure
"Flashlight is instantly bewitching: a mysterious family tragedy whose solution reaches beyond psychology into geopolitics. Susan Choi's fictional investigation reveals a writer at the height of her spectacular powers." - Jennifer Egan
"Susan Choi casts a fascinating light on the troubled borders between identities, countries, historical periods and sometimes even her admirable sentences as she, so expertly, tells the story of a family that can't quite find its moorings." - Romesh Gunesekera
"In a brilliant feat of storytelling, both intimate and sweeping, Susan Choi has created a profoundly moving epic that blends a tender family portrait with a haunting examination of the Korean diaspora. Flashlight is that rare novel that has everything I want in ?ction: gorgeous writing, fascinating characters I fell in love with, an immersive, addictive story with an ending that made me gasp, then cry. I'm in awe." - Angie Kim
"Flashlight is a sensitive familial portrait, rigorous in its scope and complexity of feeling. Susan Choi is a master of rendering relationships with utter particularity." - Raven Leilani
"A shapeshifting novel that reconfigures reality at every turn, Susan Choi's Flashlight is a powerful beam searching through the cavernous depths of alienation, of the cruel, fierce love binding a singular family, and the historical reverberations of unthinkable displacement and loss. With masterful control, Choi charts us through a journey that defies every expectation-its cumulative effect is epic, devastating, and incandescent." - Aube Rey Lescure
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