Instead of telling the story chronologically like the book does, the show bounces forward and backward through time: Sunja (played at different ages by Yu-na Jeon, Minha Kim, and Minari’s Yuh-Jung Youn) is a young girl weeping in her father’s arms in one moment, and in the next, she’s an old woman sitting alone, lost in thought. But the series has, in liberally altering the novel’s structure, lost some of that thoroughly personal touch. Read: Min Jin Lee on what writers can take away from the BibleĪppleTV+’s eight-episode adaptation, out March 25, is equally epic. The pleasure of taking in the novel comes from its unpredictability: Sunja seems fated for poverty and hardship, but her decisions-along with the kindness and cruelty of those she meets-produce an engrossing saga that feels both epic and intimate. Even with its sweeping scope, Pachinko never reads like a textbook. Lee examines how Sunja forges her life through a combination of skill and chance, despite the invisible hand of history shaping her journey like a tampered-with pachinko machine. But like other ethnic Koreans living in Japan at the time, she’s discriminated against and treated as a second-class citizen. Born and raised in Japanese-occupied Korea, she leaves her native country for Japan as a young woman and goes on to become the matriarch of a family that eventually thrives because of her son’s pachinko business. The story primarily follows Sunja, the only child of a boardinghouse owner, over the course of the 20th century. In Min Jin Lee’s best-selling 2017 novel, Pachinko, the game is a key motif. A single adjustment can improve the chances of victory-or of failure. But expert ones understand that luck can play an even more important role, because parlor managers tend to interfere with the machines, changing players’ winning potential. Skilled players of pachinko-an arcade-style, pinball-like game found mostly in parlors across Japan-know how to launch the game’s small steel balls at just the right moment, with just the right force.

Pachinko novel