The pleasure of taking in the novel comes from its unpredictability: Sunja seems fated for poverty and hardship, but her decisions-along with the kindness and cruelty of those she meets-produce an engrossing saga that feels both epic and intimate. Even with its sweeping scope, Pachinko never reads like a textbook. Lee examines how Sunja forges her life through a combination of skill and chance, despite the invisible hand of history shaping her journey like a tampered-with pachinko machine. But like other ethnic Koreans living in Japan at the time, she’s discriminated against and treated as a second-class citizen. Born and raised in Japanese-occupied Korea, she leaves her native country for Japan as a young woman and goes on to become the matriarch of a family that eventually thrives because of her son’s pachinko business. The story primarily follows Sunja, the only child of a boardinghouse owner, over the course of the 20th century. In Min Jin Lee’s best-selling 2017 novel, Pachinko, the game is a key motif. A single adjustment can improve the chances of victory-or of failure.

But expert ones understand that luck can play an even more important role, because parlor managers tend to interfere with the machines, changing players’ winning potential. Skilled players of pachinko-an arcade-style, pinball-like game found mostly in parlors across Japan-know how to launch the game’s small steel balls at just the right moment, with just the right force.

Pachinko the book