The National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Pachinko returns with a breathtaking contemporary epic: a masterpiece by turns sweeping and intimate, that reckons with ambition and moderation, lust and loyalty, personal dreams and familial duty.
Min Jin Lee brings grand ambition, fierce heart, and the tenderest hope to a novel I didn't want to end.’ —Roxane Gay, bestselling author of Bad Feminist and Hunger
In schools and churches, hotel rooms and nail salons, law firms and fried-fish shops; in cramped, dingy apartments and luxury, gated communities, the men, women, and children in American Hagwon struggle to find satisfaction and meaning in a world that seems to grow less forgiving with each passing year. Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children—Bo, DH, and Mido—find their lives upended, first by a shocking betrayal by John’s oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
Desperately striving to regain their footing, they leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in Southern California—where new vistas of opportunity open up for the children as their parents, strangers in a strange land, must adjust to a new life in which their experience and education mean little, and they set their sights on whatever it takes to provide for their children’s futures. The Kohs, their friends, relatives, and even their foes move in and out of each other’s lives as they navigate new courses across the years, always nursing the almost all-consuming faith that education will lead the next generation to success and security.
In American Hagwon, Min Jin Lee has crafted an unforgettable, panoramic novel where the smallest of gestures can have enormous repercussions, where the bonds of family and of memory twist and fray but rarely break, and where willful self-sacrifice—for the benefit of loved ones and even strangers—is a kind of prayer.
An immersive, engrossing novel ... this is panorama told in brilliant detail.’—Colm Tóibín, bestselling author ofLong IslandandBrooklyn
Genre: Literary Fiction
Min Jin Lee brings grand ambition, fierce heart, and the tenderest hope to a novel I didn't want to end.’ —Roxane Gay, bestselling author of Bad Feminist and Hunger
In schools and churches, hotel rooms and nail salons, law firms and fried-fish shops; in cramped, dingy apartments and luxury, gated communities, the men, women, and children in American Hagwon struggle to find satisfaction and meaning in a world that seems to grow less forgiving with each passing year. Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children—Bo, DH, and Mido—find their lives upended, first by a shocking betrayal by John’s oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
Desperately striving to regain their footing, they leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in Southern California—where new vistas of opportunity open up for the children as their parents, strangers in a strange land, must adjust to a new life in which their experience and education mean little, and they set their sights on whatever it takes to provide for their children’s futures. The Kohs, their friends, relatives, and even their foes move in and out of each other’s lives as they navigate new courses across the years, always nursing the almost all-consuming faith that education will lead the next generation to success and security.
In American Hagwon, Min Jin Lee has crafted an unforgettable, panoramic novel where the smallest of gestures can have enormous repercussions, where the bonds of family and of memory twist and fray but rarely break, and where willful self-sacrifice—for the benefit of loved ones and even strangers—is a kind of prayer.
An immersive, engrossing novel ... this is panorama told in brilliant detail.’—Colm Tóibín, bestselling author ofLong IslandandBrooklyn
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"After 600 pages, how could I want more? And yet I did, and that is the magic of Min Jin Lee." - Tahmima Anam
"I adored this incredibly beautiful story ... exquisitely written, American Hagwon is an absolute joy that you will take with you for the rest of your life." - Joanna Cannon
"Beautifully crafted ... Lee brings grand ambition, fierce heart and the tenderest hope to a novel I didn't want to end." - Roxane Gay
"Enchanting and elegant ... A novel as subtle as it is sweeping, as dazzlingly intelligent as it is emotionally breathtaking. I adored it." - Elif Shafak
"An absolutely propulsive read. If your faith in either humanity or storytelling has dimmed, American Hagwon will make it blaze again." - Kamila Shamsie
"A profoundly generous and humane novel about duty, family, and the dream of a better life ... I was fully absorbed by the fates of the Koh family." - Douglas Stuart
"An immersive, engrossing novel ... brilliantly imagined ... This is panorama told in brilliant detail." - Colm Tóibín
"I read huge swaths of this book with my heart in my throat and found myself cheering." - Jacqueline Woodson
"I adored this incredibly beautiful story ... exquisitely written, American Hagwon is an absolute joy that you will take with you for the rest of your life." - Joanna Cannon
"Beautifully crafted ... Lee brings grand ambition, fierce heart and the tenderest hope to a novel I didn't want to end." - Roxane Gay
"Enchanting and elegant ... A novel as subtle as it is sweeping, as dazzlingly intelligent as it is emotionally breathtaking. I adored it." - Elif Shafak
"An absolutely propulsive read. If your faith in either humanity or storytelling has dimmed, American Hagwon will make it blaze again." - Kamila Shamsie
"A profoundly generous and humane novel about duty, family, and the dream of a better life ... I was fully absorbed by the fates of the Koh family." - Douglas Stuart
"An immersive, engrossing novel ... brilliantly imagined ... This is panorama told in brilliant detail." - Colm Tóibín
"I read huge swaths of this book with my heart in my throat and found myself cheering." - Jacqueline Woodson
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