Min Jin Lee · 2017 · overland

Min Jin Lee's 2017 saga of a Korean family across the twentieth century. It opens in Busan, where Sunja, pregnant and disgraced, is rescued by marriage to a kindly minister who takes her to Japan. From the Korean slum of Ikaino in Osaka, through war, poverty and unrelenting prejudice, her descendants endure as permanent outsiders, their fortunes finally tied to the pachinko parlours they come to run. A diaspora epic of exile and belonging, from Korea across the strait to Japan.

1. 1
   Yeongdo

   On the islet of Yeongdo in Busan, Sunja grows up in her widowed mother's boardinghouse, and is left pregnant by a married stranger.

2. 2
   Shimonoseki

   Saved by marriage to a gentle minister, she sails across the strait to Japan, landing at Shimonoseki.

3. 3
   Osaka

   To the Korean ghetto of Ikaino in Osaka, and a hard life of poverty, prejudice and stubborn endurance through war and ruin.

4. 4
   Yokohama

   And down the generations, the family's fortunes come to rest on the pachinko parlours of Yokohama, a game of chance in a country that will never quite let them belong.