Min Jin Lee, in Hong Kong, talks about her hit novel Pachinko, learning from wise people, and yearning for Korean recognition
Korean American recalls growing up speechless and confused in New York, and says how hurt she’s been that Koreans haven’t embraced her work, and why we shouldn’t be so fascinated with young people, who ‘just have smoother skin’
“The flight was 17 hours and I’ll be here less than 70 hours – half of them awake. I’m not even sure I’m awake now. I’m here to see my friends, attend the festival and eat egg tarts – they have the best egg tarts in Hong Kong,” Lee says on Saturday during a Hong Kong International Literary Festival event.
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On Wednesday she will be back in New York to attend the very fancy National Book Awards’ black tie dinner – she is a fiction finalist this year for her historic novel Pachinko , which tells the story of four generations of an ethnic Korean family, first in Japanese-occupied Korea in the early 20th century and then in Japan from just before the second world war to the late 1980s.
“I’ve got a 20 per cent chance of winning – there are five finalists,” she says.
Published in February this year, Pachinko has received widespread acclaim. Within months of its release, an annual poll in New Zealand voted it one of the best 100 books of all time. She even had fan mail from Caroline Kennedy and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. But strangely, support from Korean readers has been lacklustre.
