Flashlight

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, author of Birnam Wood

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, author of The Candy House

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 fiction: 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, author of Happiness Falls

Sprawling, rootless, and windswept, Flashlight is a psychologically astute and beautifully intimate examination of family tragedy, told from both the micro-perspective of domestic mundanity, and the dizzyingly wide angle of international politics. It reads like a classic, a political thriller, but also a tender portrait of three people who do not fit, yet somehow find themselves to be a family

Jenny Mustard, author of Okay Days

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, author of Luster

I devoured Flashlight. Once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down, and once I finished, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The plot builds like a symphony rising to a crescendo, full of surprise and wonder. The story is as astonishing as it is entirely plausible. Susan Choi clearly knows well the fraught geopolitics of Korea and Japan, and did her homework

Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy

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, author of River East, River West

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, author of Reef

What’s sort of amazing is that a novel with such a locomotive of a plot ... could just as reasonably be described as character-driven ... Choi is a writer you can trust to make the journey worthwhile. Never sentimental, never predictable, this aptly titled novel illuminates dark passages both fictional and real

Kirkus

Proves she’s a writer at the top of her game, capable of crafting a well-plotted and complex story while remaining attuned to small internal motivations, along with intersectional and cultural liminalities, those edges between surf and sand where so much violence happens, as much to bodies as to hearts, minds, and homes

Library Journal

A major world writer... Choi has a profound gift

New York Times

What an outlandishly talented writer Choi is... Choi is a writer who can be trusted to have a plan, and she sews the narrative up with a conclusion that’s almost impossibly heartbreaking — about which the less said the better

Vulture

With Franzen-esque fastidiousness, Choi unpacks each character’s backstory, exposing vanities and delusions in a cool, caustic voice, a 21st century Émile Zola

Los Angeles Times

A historical events-driven door stopper that will leave readers guessing until (almost) the very end... A fictional reimagining of one of history’s darkest chapters and a sweeping, unsettling portrait of one family caught in the throes of change and torn apart by tragedy

San Francisco Chronicle

Choi’s elegant writing is evident in this ambitious tale ... A propulsive story about family secrets and displacement

Boston Globe

Choi’s style conveys that the world, even at its worst, rewards devoted examination

Atlantic

As the captivating central family mystery is slowly illuminated, Choi’s prose shines with poetry and intelligence

New York Magazine

Engrossing... Choi is an astute, convincing writer…Flashlight [is] a rewarding read

Sunday Telegraph

Choi is one of contemporary literature’s great demolition artists, and her emotional foundations hold. She can build as well as she detonates… Like the best of those early-00s novels, Flashlight is all kinds of big: capacious of intent and scope and language and swagger

Guardian

A rich generational saga that teems with intelligence, curiosity and, in terms of reading, sheer pleasure. Like the flashlight of its title it cast an evasive, variably illuminating beam…. It surely cannot be overlooked by this year’s Booker judges

Financial Times

Choi’s startling, bristling characters power this journey, which plays in the reader’s mind with cinematic intensity

Daily Mail