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Start giftingA Person of Interest
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Learn moreWith its propulsive drive, vividly realized characters, and profound observations about soul and society, Pulitzer Prize–finalist Susan Choi's novel is as thrilling as it is lyrical, and it confirms her place as one of the most important novelists chronicling the American experience.
Lee is a math professor at a second-tier university in the Midwest. When a mail bomb goes off in the office of the star computer scientist next door, Lee is slow to realize that students and colleagues have begun to suspect that he's the Brain Bomber, an elusive terrorist whose primary targets appear to be academic hotshots.
In the midst of campus tumult over the bombing, a letter arrives from a figure in Lee's past, which forces him to revisit events and choices that shaped his failed marriage, his life as a father, and his work as a scholar of middling achievement. While Lee becomes further ensnared in the FBI's attempts to find the bomber, the churned-up regrets from his past bring him to an examination of extremes in his own life as he tries to exonerate himself, face his tormentor from his past, and atone for his failings.
Intricately plotted and psychologically acute, A Person of Interest exposes the fault lines of paranoia and dread that have fractured American life and asks how far one man must go to escape his regrets.
Susan Choi is the author of American Woman, a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize; The Foreign Student, which won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction; and A Person of Interest, which was a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award.
Bernadette Dunne, winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards, studied at the Royal National Theatre in London and the Studio Theater in Washington, DC. She lives in Brooklyn.
Reviews
“Choi’s precise, cadenced prose alternates between plain-spokenness and lyrical dazzle. Her long, complex sentences compel us to follow wherever they go, and to admire the quiet authority, at once soothing and gripping, with which they arrive there.”
“A nuanced consideration of what it means to fit in, and of what we owe to the people around us, A Person of Interest eschews obvious answers. At once a tragedy of character and a tale of suspense, this novel is a seamless integration of the political and the personal, beautifully written and impeccably unsentimental.”
“With nuance, psychological acuity and pitch-perfect writing, [Choi] tells the large-canvas story of paranoia in the age of terror and…the cost of failed dreams and the damage we do to one another in the name of love.”
“One of the most remarkable novels to have emerged from our age of terror…The sweaty pace of the contemporary thriller complements the quiet tragedy of the older, domestic drama, and through it all runs Choi’s scathing, illuminating scrutiny…Choi remains, more than ever, a writer of interest.”
“That it is superbly told is no surprise. That its melodrama comes out as gravely real is due to Choi’s profound rendering of her protagonist’s estrangement in an estranged society, and even to the slow and hard-going detail with which she has established it.”
“Choi’s reflections from Lee’s gruffly brittle point of view are as intricate and penetrating as the shifting intrigue surrounding the bomb. The result is a magisterial meditation on appearance and misunderstanding as it plays out for Lee as spouse, colleague, exile and citizen.”
“[Dunne] grasps the stomach-twisting emotions of the usually reserved teacher and subtly delivers his underlying turmoil. Dunne also masterfully delivers the twang of a grad-school friend the professor betrayed and the no-nonsense approach of investigators.”
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