Pachinko: A Novel

"There could only be a few winners & a lot of losers. And yet we played on because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones." 

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 — & 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, & to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations. Richly told & profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, & loyalty. 

From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex & passionate characters--strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters & sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis--survive & thrive against the indifferent arc of history. 

*Includes reading group guide*