Flashlight

A Novel

By: Susan Choi

Narrated by: Eunice Wong

A Most Anticipated Book of the Year: Time, The Washington Post, and Literary Hub

A novel tracing a father’s disappearance across time, nations, and memory, from the author of Trust Exercise.

One night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the beach. He’s carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later Louisa is found washed up by the tide, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old.

In chapters that shift from one member to the next, turning back again and again to that night by the sea, Susan Choi's Flashlight chases the shockwaves of one family’s catastrophe. Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past. Her father, Serk, an ethnic Korean born and raised in Japan, lost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to the DPRK. Her American mother, Anne, is estranged from her family after a reckless adventure in her youth. And then there is Tobias, Anne’s illegitimate son, whose reappearance in their lives will have astonishing consequences.

What really happened to Louisa’s father? Why did he take Louisa and her mother to Japan just before he disappeared? And how can we love, or make sense of our lives, when there’s so much we can’t see?

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Critic reviews

“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 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

“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

“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 and Daughters of the Bamboo Grove

Well told and beautifully narrated

The story was incredibly interesting. I had no idea that people were disappeared like that.

Excellent story & narration

This is such an epic story. The narrator did an excellent job. I enjoyed this and I’ll think about it for a long time to come.

An unforgettable book

This is one of those books that make you think of the characters and the story long after you have finished it. The human experience can be so horrific and yet so beautiful. I love the way this book came together in a way I did not expect.

Best book I’ve read this year

Could not stop listening - get this book you won’t regret it. Unique compelling and harrowing story.

Great story, hard to listen to

I couldn’t get through the audiobook because the narrator’s intonations became too monotonous for me. Every sentence read with the exact same inflection. I bought the book and enjoyed it much more reading it than listening to it.