Pachinko

Details:

• author: Min Jin Lee
  
• full title: Pachinko
  
• narrator: Allison Hiroto
  
• genre: historical fiction
  
• topics: #immigration #japan #korea
• country: korea, japan, asia
  
• publisher: Hachette Audio
  
• publish date: 07.02.2017
  
• timing: 18:16:00
  
  

My Rating of the Audiobook:

• content: 💙💙💙💙
• narration: 💙💙💙💙.5

 

Goodreads

Excerpt from the Book:

The more she saw him, the more vivid he grew in her mind. His stories filled her head with people and places she had never imagined before. He lived in Osaka-a large port city in Japan where he said you could get anything you wanted if you had the money and where almost every house had electric lights and plug-in heaters to keep you warm in the winter. He said Tokyo was far busier than Seoul-with more people, shops, restaurants, and theaters. He had been to Manchuria and Pyongyang. He described each place to her and told her that one day she would go with him to these places, but she couldn't understand how this would ever happen.

My Thoughts:

Teenage Sunja is pregnant and unmarried. She believed her lover, a wealthy stranger, will marry her, but it turned out that he was already married. After she declines to be his lover, another stranger comes to town, marries her, and takes her home with him to Osaka, Japan. There, she expects to have a better life. But will she really have a better life there?

Pachinko is a multigenerational family saga about a Korean family living in Japan from the early to late 1900s. This is one part of the history that was pretty unknown to me.

Readers who like historical fiction, especially with a setting different from usual, will like this beautiful novel that depicts the misery and self-sacrifice of Koreans living in Japan. This novel especially tells the story of courageous women. Sunja is a brave character that endured that harsh time, battling poverty and racism, and is aware of the importance of family.

About the Author:

Min Jin Lee is a recipient of fiction fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard. Her second novel Pachinko (2017) was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the Medici Book Club Prize, and a New York Times 10 Best Books of 2017. A New York Times Bestseller, Pachinko was also a Top 10 Books of the Year for BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the New York Public Library. Pachinko was a selection for “Now Read This,” the joint book club of PBS NewsHour and The New York Times. It was on over 75 best books of the year lists, including NPR, PBS, and CNN. Pachinko will be translated into 25 languages. Lee’s debut novel Free Food for Millionaires (2007) was a Top 10 Books of the Year for The Times of London, NPR’s Fresh Air, USA Today, and a national bestseller. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, NPR’s Selected Shorts, One Story, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, Conde Nast Traveler, The Times of London, and Wall Street Journal. She served three consecutive seasons as a Morning Forum columnist of the Chosun Ilbo of South Korea. In 2018, Lee was named as an Adweek Creative 100 for being one of the “10 Writers and Editors Who are Changing the National Conversation” and a Frederick Douglass 200. She received an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Monmouth College. She will be a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College from 2019-2022.