Pachinko Reading Order

Pachinko (2017) by Min Jin Lee is a multigenerational saga following a Korean family across four generations — from a fishing village in early twentieth-century Korea to the pachinko parlors of Osaka and the corporate towers of modern Tokyo. Beginning in 1910 with a young woman named Sunja, whose life is altered by an affair with a powerful man, the novel traces her descendants through decades of war, displacement, discrimination, and survival, examining the specific precariousness of Koreans in Japan — a community that remains marginal, stateless, and despised across generations regardless of where it was born. Lee spent twenty-five years researching and writing the novel; it was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2017 and has since been adapted for Apple TV+.