Flashlight by Susan Choi

A thrilling, globe-spanning novel that mines questions of memory, language, identity
and family.

One evening, 10-year-old Louisa and her father take a walk out on the
breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal Japanese town while
her father Serk, a Korean émigré, completes an academic secondment from his
American university. When Louisa wakes hours later, she has washed up on the
beach and her father is missing, probably drowned. 

The disappearance of Louisa’s father shatters their small family unit. As Louisa and
her American mother Anne return to the US, this traumatic event reverberates across
time and space, and the mystery of what really happened to Serk slowly unravels. 
Flashlight moves between the post-war Korean immigrant community in Japan, to
suburban America, and the North Korean regime, to tell the astonishing story of one
family swept up in the tides of 20th Century history.
(The Booker Prize 2025 Shortlist)

We hope you will join us to discuss this highly praised novel.
In October we will be reading The Director by Daniel Kehlmann (translator Ross
Benjamin).