In 1910, when Hoonie was twenty-seven years old, Japan annexed Korea. Like his parents, Hoonie was not a nimble talker, and some made the mistake of thinking that because he could not speak quickly there was something wrong with his mind, but that was not true. Inky eyebrows graced his broad forehead, perpetually tanned from outdoor work. When Hoonie covered his misshapen mouth with his hands, something he did out of habit meeting strangers, he resembled his nice-looking father, both having the same large, smiling eyes. Even as a young man, he retained the mild, thoughtful temperament he’d had as a child.

Hoonie was born with a cleft palate and a twisted foot he was, however, endowed with hefty shoulders, a squat build, and a golden complexion. In their long marriage, the wife gave birth to three sons, but only Hoonie, the eldest and the weakest one, survived. Both were born and raised in the fishing village of Yeongdo-a five-mile-wide islet beside the port city of Busan. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan’s finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee’s complex and passionate characters–strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis–survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.Īt the turn of the century, an aging fisherman and his wife decided to take in lodgers for extra money. Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son’s powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant–and that her lover is married–she refuses to be bought.

In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones.” “There could only be a few winners, and a lot of losers. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * #1 BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER * USA TODAY BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER * WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER Roxane Gay’s Favorite Book of 2017, Washington Post NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2017 * A USA TODAY TOP TEN OF 2017 * JULY PICK FOR THE PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB NOW READ THIS * FINALIST FOR THE 2018 DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE* WINNER OF THE MEDICI BOOK CLUB PRIZE

A New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year and National Book Award finalist, Pachinko is an “extraordinary epic” of four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family as they fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan ( San Francisco Chronicle).

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee