If you’re a bookworm, you’ve probably heard of (or loved reading!) Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. Many people call it one of their favorite books ever—myself included. It’s #15 on The New York Times list of the 100 Best Books of the Century for good reason!
It’s been nearly a decade since author Min Jin Lee released Pachinko, and she is finally back with another novel. It’s called American Hagwon, and it follows the once middle-class Koh family through the 1997 Asian financial crisis as they sacrifice for their children’s future through immigration and education. If you loved Pachinko, you’ll love American Hagwon, too.
Min Jin Lee spoke to Spotify ahead of her new book release and shared some of the most important books of her writing career—and Spotify shared them with Good Housekeeping.
She picked one book that she’d recommend to everyone: Middlemarch by George Eliot. “I want folks to see much more than themselves and George Eliot was writing about community—not just herself," she said.
She then shared an incredibly relatable feeling for book lovers: The desire to read a book for the first time again. Re-reading is great, but nothing beats the first time you discover a beautiful book and can’t wait to see how it unfolds. While many of us wish we could experience Pachinko like it was new again, Min Jin Lee picked A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry.
"That book just knocked me out in terms of what happens when you have four strangers almost forced to live together in a kind of global economic and political crisis," she said.
The 1995 novel is set in India in 1975 during a State of Emergency. It follows four strangers sharing a small apartment and trying to survive the personal and political upheaval: a widow, a student, and two tailors fleeing caste violence. Like Min Jin Lee’s own books, it’s a sweeping story about inequality and hardship during a tumultuous period of history.
Min Jin Lee also recommended a few more books, naming the book she’d give to her younger self (Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë), the book that made her want to be a writer (A House for Mr. Biswas by VS Naipaul), and the book that reminds her of childhood (The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams). With so many book recommendations, our TBR is filling up fast!
