The Foreign Student

Reviews / Votes

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 * 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 Memoirs of A Geisha Susan Choi writes gracefully, insightfully and with striking maturity * Time * 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 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 * 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 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