"A novel of secrets that unfold like the leaves on an artichoke. The Foreign Student is a mosaic of betrayal in peace and war that marks the debut of a gifted young novelist wise beyond her years." - John Gregory Dunne
"A luminous and accomplished first novel . . . that resonates with compassion-turned-ardor and an addictive melancholy vibrating beneath every line." - Houston Chronicle
"A powerful and involving book. . . [written in] a style that can accommodate both the broad forces of history and the most intimate of lives." - Lamar Herrin, author of The Lies Boys Tell
"A young war-shocked Korean man falls for a comely southern belle with secrets of her own in Susan Choi's elegantly wrought first novel, The Foreign Student." - Vanity Fair
"An accomplished, perceptive novel, which invites rereading and lingers in the reader's memory." - Booklist
"Richly detailed. . . . Moving from the present to the past, from America to Korea, Choi brings hundreds of small scenes to life." - New York Times Book Review
"Susan Choi has written a first novel of extraordinary sensibility and transforming strangeness. Her prose has the feel of a handmade artifact, oddly bumpy at times and startlingly expressive." - Los Angeles Times Book Review
"This wonderful hybrid of a novel--a love story, a war story, a novel of manners--introduces a writer of enchanting gifts, a beautiful heart wedded to a beautiful imagination. How else does Susan Choi so fully inhabit characters from disparate backgrounds, with such brilliant wit and insight? The Foreign Student stirs up great and lovely emotions." - Francisco Goldman, author of The Ordinary Seaman
"Two very unlikely worlds intersect in The Foreign Student, war-ravaged Korea and the genteel culture of Sewanee, Tennessee. In gracious prose, Susan Choi renders their cruelties, their lies, and their beauty." - Arthur Golden, author of Memories of A Geisha
"An auspicious debut novel . . . epic in its harrowing accounts of war and intimate in its charged descriptions of the unlikely love affair at its center." - The New Yorker
"Choi tells her story with meticulous attention to detail and unfailing self-confidence." - The Miami Herald
"Choi's descriptions are strange and powerful. . . . The Foreign Student's plot is carefully orchestrated and camera-ready. It takes a war, an epistolary betrayal, and a natural disaster to effect a kiss." - New York magazine
"First-time novelist Susan Choi writes gracefully, insightfully and with striking maturity." - Time

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Pub date: 1999-08-04

Length: 336 pages