Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant — and that her lover is married — she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. 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.

Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. 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.


Pachinko was actually much different than what I went in thinking it would be. This is the first time I have read a historical fiction book based in that part of the world and especially with that subject matter. I learned a lot about how Koreans were treated in Japan and how daily life was for most of Koreans.

I would say that obviously this book is a historical fiction but I would also largely classify it as literary fiction. The writing was beautiful and Lee did an amazing job of putting me right in the story and carrying these characters across generations.

If you enjoy rich sagas then give this book a try!


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