2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction (longlist)
2025 Booker Prize (shortlist)
2025 National Book Award for Fiction (longlist)
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025**
A moment is all it takes to shatter a family. The echoes last a lifetime...
‘Ferociously smart and full of surprises’ Eleanor Catton
‘Engrossing... Full of brains and mystery’ Telegraph
One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father, Serk, take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal Japanese town. Hours later, Louisa wakes on the beach, soaked to the skin. Her father is missing: presumably drowned.
This sudden event shatters their small family. As Louisa and her American mother return to the US, Serk's disappearance reverberates across time and space, and the mystery of what really happened that night slowly unravels.
A Book of the Year for the Guardian, Time, New Yorker, Esquire, Vanity Fair, FT and Barack Obama
'Big, bold and surprising’ Guardian
'Illuminates the buried secrets of the human heart' Oprah Daily
'Gorgeous... Almost impossibly heartbreaking' New York Magazine
'It will make your head spin in the best way' Dakota Johnson
'Endlessly dazzling' Vogue
READERS LOVE FLASHLIGHT
'Compelling, fascinating, original. Read this book'
'Five stars. Heartbreaking'
'A beautifully written story of a family across decades'
'I loved it - the best read in years. Glorious'
'Absolutely brilliant'
Genre: Literary Fiction
A moment is all it takes to shatter a family. The echoes last a lifetime...
‘Ferociously smart and full of surprises’ Eleanor Catton
‘Engrossing... Full of brains and mystery’ Telegraph
One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father, Serk, take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal Japanese town. Hours later, Louisa wakes on the beach, soaked to the skin. Her father is missing: presumably drowned.
This sudden event shatters their small family. As Louisa and her American mother return to the US, Serk's disappearance reverberates across time and space, and the mystery of what really happened that night slowly unravels.
A Book of the Year for the Guardian, Time, New Yorker, Esquire, Vanity Fair, FT and Barack Obama
'Big, bold and surprising’ Guardian
'Illuminates the buried secrets of the human heart' Oprah Daily
'Gorgeous... Almost impossibly heartbreaking' New York Magazine
'It will make your head spin in the best way' Dakota Johnson
'Endlessly dazzling' Vogue
READERS LOVE FLASHLIGHT
'Compelling, fascinating, original. Read this book'
'Five stars. Heartbreaking'
'A beautifully written story of a family across decades'
'I loved it - the best read in years. Glorious'
'Absolutely brilliant'
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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