Yeongdo, Korea, 1911.
Teenaged Sunja is the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman. She falls for a wealthy yakuza. He promises her the world, and all her life seems to fall into place. But when Sunja discovers she is pregnant – and that her lover is married – she refuses to be bought. Facing ruin, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle minister passing through on his way to Japan. And so she follows a man she barely knows to a hostile country where she has no friends. As a result, Sunja will be forced to make difficult choices. And her decisions will echo through the decardes.
Spanning nearly 100 years of history, Pachinko is an unforgettable story of love and sacrifice, ambition and loyalty told through four generations of one family.
This wondeful novel has been hailed by Barack Obama and novelist David Mitchell. The Irish Times called it “A masterpeice of empathy, integrity and familial loyalty”.
