American Woman by Susan Choi

American Woman by Susan Choi

"Susan Choi. . . proves herself a natural--a writer whose intelligence and historical awareness effortlessly serve a breathtaking narrative ability. I couldn't put American Woman down, and wanted when I finished it to do nothing but read it again."  --Joan Didion

A novel of impressive scope and complexity, "American Woman is a thoughtful, meditative interrogation of...history and politics, of power and racism, and finally, of radicalism." (San Francisco Chronicle), perfect for readers who love Emma Cline's novel, The Girls.

On the lam for an act of violence against the American government, 25-year-old Jenny Shimada agrees to care for three younger fugitives whom a shadowy figure from her former radical life has spirited out of California. One of them, the kidnapped granddaughter of a wealthy newspaper magnate in San Francisco, has become a national celebrity for embracing her captors' ideology and joining their revolutionary cell.

American Woman explores the psychology of the young radicals, the intensity of their isolated existence, and the paranoia and fear that undermine their ideals.

The Foreign Student, Susan Choi's first novel, earned the Asian-American Literary Prize for fiction. Her second novel, American Woman, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2004 and her third, A Person of Interest, was a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist in 2009. She has earned scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and in 2010 she was awarded the PEN/W. The G.Sebald Prize is given to a writer who has made a significant contribution to She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons and teaches at Princeton.