LiteratureBook · 2017
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee
Sunja, pregnant and unmarried in colonial Korea, accepts a minister's offer of marriage and a life in Osaka, and four generations of her family then live as Koreans in a Japan that will not have them. Lee is very good on the pachinko parlours that were among the few businesses open to them, and on how respectability keeps having to be bought again. It was a National Book Award finalist.
Why you should read this
A multigenerational saga about a Korean family who settle in Japan across the twentieth century, and a finalist for a leading literary award. It is often the first place Western readers encounter Zainichi Korean history in any depth, and it favors patient, chronological pacing over structural experimentation.
- Field
- Literature
- Form
- Fiction
- Published
- 2017
- Themes
- Korean LiteratureLiteratureContemporary
