I didn’t think ‘Pachinko’ could be topped. Then I read ‘American Hagwon’

NPR's Maureen Corrigan has praised Min Jin Lee's new novel, "American Hagwon." She writes that the book was nearly ten years in the making and is the third in Lee's planned four-novel series about the Korean diaspora. The second, "Pachinko," was a National Book Award finalist. The novel runs past 600 pages, spans 1992 to 2007 and centers on the Koh family. John and Helen Koh have returned to Seoul after six years in Sydney, and their three children were born in New Jersey. A betrayal by John's oldest friend, who is also his superior at the company, turns Korea into another temporary stop. After the Asian financial crisis of 1997, most of the family ends up in Southern California, where John finds work in the kitchen of a fish restaurant. All three children work at some point for a hagwon, a private after-school prep academy. In one scene its director tells some 500 parents that education should be transformative, not just transactional. Corrigan writes that the novel deals with immigration, the fragile promise of America and the purpose of education, and that it appeals to the head as well as the heart. She calls Lee's exposition-heavy style deft. Photo: Fffm&pachinkofan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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