For March’s Skylarking Bookclub, we will be reading Pachinko by the keynote speaker at this year’s Unbound Book Festival, Min Jin Lee. Come and share your views of this stunning novel ahead of Min’s appearance at Jesse Auditorium on April 18!
Min Jin Lee is a writer whose award-winning fiction explores the intersection of race, ethnicity, immigration, class, religion, gender, and identity of a diasporic people. Pachinko, her second novel, is an epic story which follows a Korean family who migrates to Japan; it is the first novel written for an adult, English-speaking audience about the Korean-Japanese people. Pachinko 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, the novel was also a Top 10 Books of the Year for the BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the New York Public Library. It 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 has been translated into over 35 languages and is an international bestseller. President Barack Obama selected it for his recommended reading list, calling it, “a powerful story about resilience and compassion.” In 2024 Pachinko was named one of the New York Times Book Review’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.
