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**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025**
A story of the lives of the three people who make a family, the one moment in history that shatters what held them together, and the reverberations of that event that last a lifetime
The astonishing story of one family swept up in the tides of the twentieth century, ranging from post-war Japan to suburban America and the North Korean regime
One evening, ten-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.
Author: Susan Choi
Paperback Published 15 July 2025 464 pages
'Ferociously smart and full of surprises' Eleanor Catton, author of Birnam Wood
'A rich generational saga that teems with intelligence' Financial Times