Author of the week
Susan Choi
Susan Choi is making a career of trying her father’s patience, said Jessica Murphy in Poets & Writers. Ten years after debuting with The Foreign Student, an invented love story involving a Korean-born undergraduate who was based on her dad, Choi has published a new novel that imagines how someone like her old man would respond if he became a suspect in a Unabomber-style terror campaign. The concept isn’t all that farfetched. Back in the 1960s, her father was a graduate-school classmate of Ted Kaczynski in the University of Michigan’s mathematics department. Had they stayed closer over the years, she says, who knows where FBI suspicions might have lead?
A Person of Interest, Choi’s ���enthralling” third novel, speculates that an innocent man might have difficulty clearing his name, said Megan O’Grady in Vogue. “When you’re accused of doing something you haven’t done, the first impulse is to feel guilt or unease,” Choi says. “Anyone would start behaving badly.” The vexed math professor in the book doesn’t share her father’s exact background. There are events in both men’s lives, though, that the average person would want to keep from scrutiny. “My father,” says Choi, “is very, very tolerant of the fact that many of the difficult truths that he ends up sharing with me end up then immediately getting fictionalized.” Fortunately his daughter has a gift for stories based on reality. Her American Woman, a fictional account of Patty Hearst’s kidnapping, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2004.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
![https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516-320-80.jpg)
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Hamas and Fatah sign unity agreement in Beijing
Speed Read China brokered a reconciliation deal between the rival Palestinian factions
By Arion McNicoll, The Week UK Published
-
The Earth just saw its hottest day on record
Speed Read July 21, 2024 was the hottest day in recorded global history
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Bob Menendez to resign after corruption conviction
Speed Read The New Jersey senator submitted to resignation pressure following charges of federal bribery and corruption
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-ups
feature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”
By The Week Staff Last updated