Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

To be Korean living in Japan was to be in identity limbo. Min Jin Lee softly examines the absurd impossibility of assimilation in her latest novel, Pachinko (Grand Central Publishing, 2017), which follows four generations of a Korean family from the end of one world war to the other. Though I could recommend the novel as a history lesson or a sad parallel to modern immigrants’ circumstances, I’d rather focus on the dynamite perspective changes and the way Lee ends her chapters with beautifully subtle turns that compelled me to continue reading on and on and on. –Jessica Rogen