Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2008
368 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
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.
"[An] awkward third novel .. The climax defies belief on several counts - Lee's soul is too small to carry the novel, despite the author's astute observations." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Starred Review." - Publishers Weekly.
"[An] eloquent, penetrating novel . . . Behind the headlines that trigger Choi's imagination, she sees intricate, difficult lives; she sees romance and error and dignity and pain -- and finally, as with Lee, she sees the possibility for redemption." - O Magazine.
"No matter the year in which her novels are set, Choi's subject is contemporary American as much as it is America's past. The result is historical fiction with present-day relevance." - Poets & Writers magazine.
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Heather Weston
Susan Choi is the author of the novels My Education, A Person of Interest, American Woman, and The Foreign Student. Her work has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award and winner of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award and the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction. With David Remnick, she co-edited Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker. She's received NEA and Guggenheim Foundation fellowships. She lives in Brooklyn.
Name Pronunciation
Susan Choi: choy
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