A multigenerational saga following a Korean family, beginning with Sunja, a fisherman's daughter in Japanese-occupied Korea who bears a child out of wedlock, as they emigrate to Osaka and struggle across decades as ethnic Korean outsiders in Japan, with sons Noa and Mozasu taking divergent paths through education and the pachinko business.
Books mentioned in Pachinko (7)
Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson: Epigraph opening Book III: "I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community..." —Benedict Anderson
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens: “my favorite is the first one he gave me, David Copperfield. I admire David.”
Middlemarch by George Eliot: “Adam Bede was not as exciting or developed as Middlemarch”
Adam Bede by George Eliot: “Adam Bede is a bore. I almost died reading that thing.”
Silas Marner by George Eliot: “Silas Marner is barely tolerable.”
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot: “an extensive psychological portrait of the heroine in Daniel Deronda, the self-centered Gwendolen Harleth”
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “His favorite was Goethe; he must have read The Sorrows of Young Werther at least half a dozen times.”