Flashlight by Susan Choi

A riveting story of a family in crisis, Flashlight unravels an intimate tragedy in a sweeping scope.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker • Time • New York • The Washington Post • NPR • Los Angeles Times • The Boston Globe • The Guardian • Vanity Fair • Elle • Town & Country • Oprah Daily • The New York Post • 48 Hills • Financial Times • The Economist • Esquire (UK) • Kirkus Reviews • Electric Literature • PEN America • The Chicago Public Library • Los Angeles Review of Books.

One of President Obama's Favorite Books of 2025

“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 • Long-listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction • Finalist for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards

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.