Susan Choi Books In Order

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. The Foreign Student (1998)
  2. American Woman (2003)
  3. A Person of Interest (2008)
  4. My Education (2013)
  5. Trust Exercise (2019)

Picture Books In Publication Order

  1. Camp Tiger (2019)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. The Future Dictionary of America (2004)
  2. The Writer’s Library (2020)

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Picture Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Susan Choi Books Overview

The Foreign Student

Set in wartime Korea during the early 1950s, and in the American South in the years immediately following, The Foreign Student brings together two intelligent, original charactersa Korean student and a rebellious young American womanin an affecting story of improbable love and emotional healing. Chang Ahn, called Chuck, has arrived at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, with the contents of one suitcase and a working knowledge of English. It is 1955, and he has come to escape nightmarish memories of his native Korea. Guarded and reserved, Chuck is slow to befriend the American students, with the exception of Crane, a boisterous, wealthy dormitory mate who sets aside his own parochial opinions to cultivate a friendship with this intriguing Korean. A charismatic professor of English, Charles Addison, also takes a particular interest in Chuck. But it is Katherine Monroe, alone among the members of the sleepy college community, who becomes the private center of Chuck’s attention. In many ways, Katherine is as much an outsider as he is. Neither student nor faculty, she lives in Sewanee, somewhat isolated in her family’s onetime summer house. The two meet on his first morning in town, and they sense an immediate, strange affinity. Katherine, commanding and resolute, begins marshaling Chuck on his round of obligations, and they form a devoted, if cautious, friendship. Both remain circumspect about the afflictions of the past that have led them to seek a kind of refuge in Sewanee. The seemingly impossible love that develops between Katherine and Chuck is as first denied, later resisted by both. It will drive them apart, and send them on separate journeys of self discovery that will eventually strengthen the bonds rather than the differences between them. Both loners and survivors, they must come to recognize why their pasts have led them to this particular time and place, and what fate has, perhaps, intended. With the storytelling prowess of a seasoned veteran, and the elegant prose of a rare master of fiction, Susan Choi has written a stunning first novel. At once haunting and illuminating, The Foreign Student is a remarkable achievement.

American Woman

Susan Choi’s first novel, The Foreign Student, was published to remarkable critical acclaim. The New Yorker called it ‘an auspicious debut,’ and the Los Angeles Times touted it as ‘a novel of extraordinary sensibility and transforming strangeness,’ naming it one of the ten best books of the year. American Woman, this gifted writer’s second book, is a novel of even greater scope and dramatic complexity, about a young Japanese American radical caught in the militant underground of the mid 1970s. When 25 year old Jenny Shimada steps out of the Rhinecliff train station in New York’s Hudson Valley, the last person she expects to see is Rob Frazer, a shadowy figure from her previous life. On the lam for an act of violence against the American government, Jenny agrees to take on the job of caring for three younger fugitives whom Frazer has spirited out of California. One of them, the granddaughter of a wealthy newspaper magnate in San Francisco, has become a national celebrity. Kidnapped by a homegrown revolutionary group, Pauline shocked America when she embraced her captors’ ideology, denouncing family and class to enlist in their radical cell. American Woman unfolds the story of Jenny and her charges Pauline, Juan, and Yvonne, the remains of the busted revolutionary cadre as they pursue their destinies from an old farmhouse in upstate New York back to California. Provocative, suspenseful, and often wickedly comic, the novel explores the psychology of the young radicals outsiders all as isolation and paranoia inevitably undermine their ideals. American Woman is a tour de force with chilling resonance for readers today.

A Person of Interest

From an acclaimed novelist, an emotionally complex and riveting story of suspicion, innocence, and regret When a mail bomb explodes in the campus office next door, Lee, an Asian American math professor at a second tier university in the Midwest, comes under suspicion. The authorities believe he may be the infamous brain bomber, an elusive terrorist whose primary targets are prominent scientists and mathematicians. In the midst of campus tumult and grief over the star computer scientist who was killed by the bomb, Lee receives a disturbing letter from a figure in his past. Certain he is being targeted for revenge, he begins confronting key events in his life. Misunderstood by the people around him, Lee is not conscious that his behavior has begun to heighten suspicion in the minds of his colleagues, students, and neighbors, leading the FBI to designate him A Person of Interest and pushing his life and reputation to the verge of ruin. Intricately plotted and engrossing, A Person of Interest asks how far one man can run from his past, and explores the impact of scrutiny and suspicion in an age of terror. With its propulsive drive and vividly realized characters, Susan Choi’s latest novel is as thrilling as it is lyrical, and confirms her place as one of the most important young novelists chronicling the American experience.

The Future Dictionary of America

This book was conceived by Safran Foer Foer, Nicole Krauss, and Dave Eggers as a way to bring over a hundred authors together to promote progressive causes in the November 2004 election. The book is an imagining of what a dictionary might look like about thirty years hence, when all of the world’s problems are solved and our current president is a distant memory. The book is by turns funny, outraged, utopian, and dyspeptic. Over 150 writers contributed to the book, including: Stephen King, Robert Olen Butler, Glen David Gold, Richard Powers, Susan Straight, Sarah Vowell, Billy Collins, C.K. Williams, Colson Whitehead, Donald Antrim, Jonathan Franzen, Edwidge Danticat, Edward Hirsch, Joyce Carol Oates, Katha Pollitt, Padgett Powell, Paul Auster, Anthony Swofford, Julia Alvarez, Susan Choi, Jim Shepard, Aimee Bender, and Art Spiegelman. Hardcover editions of the book will also include a CD compilation, with all new songs by the best musicians working. Among them: David Byrne, R.E.M., Death Cab for Cutie, Moby, Sleater Kinney, Flaming Lips, Tom Waits, Yo La Tengo, Bright Eyes, They Might Be Giants, Elliott Smith, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

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