Listen to a sample
Flashlight
- Author
- Susan Choi
- Narrator
- Eunice Wong
- Publisher
- Random House
- Publish Date
- 10 July 2025
- Run Time
- 17 hours 53 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Historical fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Narrative theme: identity / belonging, Narrative theme: diversity, equity, equality, inclusion, Family life fiction / Stories about family
- Rating
- 4.7 (3 reviews)
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What to expect
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025
A moment is all it takes to shatter a family. The echoes last a lifetime...
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.
‘Ferociously smart and full of surprises’ Eleanor Catton
‘A family epic… Engrossing’ Telegraph
‘Big, bold and surprising’ Guardian
‘Gorgeous... Almost impossibly heartbreaking’ New York Magazine
‘Illuminates the buried secrets of the human heart’ Oprah Daily
© Susan Choi 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
Critics Review
-
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
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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
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Engrossing... Choi is an astute, convincing writer…Flashlight [is] a rewarding read
Sunday Telegraph
-
An ambitious generational saga meets mystery thriller that spans several decades and countries… The story begins with a disappearance, then ripples out from there for a compulsive read
BBC, *Summer Reads of 2025*
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Choi’s startling, bristling characters power this journey, which plays in the reader’s mind with cinematic intensity
Daily Mail
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
User Reviews
Book 4.7
Narration 4.0
-
5.0 5.0
What a journey! I laughed, cried and felt everything in between. Lots of praise for the brilliant writing of Susan Choi and the exquisite narration by Eunice Wong. Bravo!
fufi 2026-04-05 -
4.0 4.0
A sprawling generational story of a father's separation from his family after he's kidnapped by the North Koreans and the impact that has on his wife and daughter (they believe he has drowned).
I think I benefitted enormously by listening to this on audiobook - a lot of goodread reviews said it was too long. I didn't feel that at all. I was riveted throughout.ClareR 2025-11-25
Details
- Author
- Susan Choi
- Narrator
- Eunice Wong
- Duration
- 17 hours 53 minutes
- Release Date
- 10 July 2025
- ISBN
- 9781529970661
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Random House
- Genre
- Historical fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Narrative theme: identity / belonging, Narrative theme: diversity, equity, equality, inclusion, Family life fiction / Stories about family
- Rating
- 4.7(3 reviews)
- Narration
- 4.0(3 reviews)
Synopsis
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025A moment is all it takes to shatter a family. The echoes last a lifetime...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.‘Ferociously smart and full of surprises’ Eleanor Catton‘A family epic… Engrossing’ Telegraph‘Big, bold and surprising’ Guardian‘Gorgeous... Almost impossibly heartbreaking’ New York Magazine‘Illuminates the buried secrets of the human heart’ Oprah Daily© Susan Choi 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
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