**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025** 'Ferociously smart and full of surprises' Eleanor
Catton 'Instantly bewitching' Jennifer Egan 'A rich generational saga that teems with
intelligence' Financial Times 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. ' Big bold and surprising' Guardian
'Engrossing... Choi is an astute convincing writer' Sunday Telegraph ' Susan Choi is a
master of rendering relationships with utter particularity' Raven Leilani author of Luster
'I couldn't put it down and once I finished I couldn't stop thinking about it' Barbara Demick
author of Nothing to Envy
