Asia Society Book Club: «Pachinko» by Min Jin Lee

At our next Asia Society Book Club, we will discuss «Pachinko» published in 2017 by the Korean-American author Min Jin Lee. It is a New York Times Bestseller and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.

«Pachinko» follows one Korean family through four generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea, shortly after the Japanese annexing of Korea, and then in Japan itself from the years before World War II to the late 1980s.
The novel begins with Sunja, the daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. After being abandoned by her lover, she is saved when a young priest offers to marry and bring her to Japan. This marks the beginning of an ethnic Korean family’s story living in exile facing a life as outsiders and being part of a politically marginalized minority. The family is bound together by deep roots as they face essential questions of faith, family, homeland, belonging and identity.

Min Jin Lee went to Yale College where she was awarded both the Henry Wright Prize for Nonfiction and the James Ashmun Veech Prize for Fiction. Prior to writing full time she attended law school at Georgetown University and worked as a lawyer for several years in New York. Lee has spoken about writing, politics, film and literature at various institutions and organizations. From 2007 to 2011, she lived in Tokyo where she researched and wrote Pachinko. Today, she lives in New York with her family.

Suggest a Book
If you have any interesting reading recommendations, please let us know so we can consider them for our next meeting.